Journals

One of our activities this summer, aimed at keeping my kids' little brains sharp, is journal writing.  I came up with the idea after reading through Austin's writing journal he brought home from school this week.  I was amazed at how crazy much his writing has improved over the last 9 months, and I loved getting a glimpse inside his brain, seeing what he chose to write about and what was important enough for him to record.  It was sweet, funny, and totally him.

My kids love to write, so I knew this was an activity they would be totally on board with.  I even gave them new composition books to write in, and you would have thought it was Christmas around here.

I Googled "children's writing prompts" and found a website with 180 different writing prompts to get kids started.  There will be days when they could free write for hours I'm sure, but there will also be days when they need a little push.  I weeded through some of the ones that didn't apply to my kids (tell about a time you  traveled to a different country, for example), sliced the rest up into strips and put them in a glass bottle.

Every day, or at least every day that we journal write, we can pull a topic out of the bottle and get started.  Today has been rainy and blah, so we went with a topic.  "Pretend you are an icicle melting, describe what it would be like".  The kids responses were awesome!  They loved the activity, and it's something that corresponds nicely with quiet time.  I promised them that I would do free write with them sometimes too.

Even though Leah can't write yet, she still joins in the activity by drawing in her journal, and telling us the story she would write down.  Yesterday she drew a picture and had me write a few sentences about what she had to say.  It was precious!