Here are a couple more writing project ideas for your family.
*One of our favorite ones to do as a group has always been a school newspaper. I make a list of "articles" that we want to include and they choose which ones they'll do. The list for our last one looked something like this:
Current Event, Recipe, Crossword Puzzle, Word Search, Comic Strip, Health Tip, Household Hints, Hidden Pictures, Job Ads, Book Review, and a Captioned Nature Photo.
We've also had historical articles, very short biographies, and science lab reports. You can have anything in the newspaper that you or your kids want. When we're done we like to type it up, print it out and mail it to grandparents. Don't forget to include answers to puzzles.
*Another one that we enjoyed this year was a book report. Since book reports are traditionally painful to write and boring to read, I decided to offer options. One child did a story board where he drew scenes from the book and put a caption under each one, telling what it was about. One rewrote a scene from a different point of view than what was originally in the book. And another wrote journal entries for one of the characters. Some of the other options were writing a letter from one character to another, writing a book review, and of course, the usual summary.
Your job is to find ways to make writing projects interesting for your kids so they won't lose momentum. Try to find actual audiences for your their writing, so they'll be motivated to do their best and feel like they accomplished something real.
