5 Great Writing Activities for Your Tween

Writing can be fun and more than just an activity confined to school. Tweens can benefit from expressing themselves and sharing their ideas on paper through fun writing activities at home. Here are five ideas for writing to get your tween inspired:

1. Have your tween start a list of important questions. With my tween, I like to encourage him to ask us questions, but we don't always have time to answer really important questions on a daily basis. So every once in a while, we will look at the growing list of questions and answer one or two of them at a time the best we can. This list of questions is what clued us in that we needed to discuss problems with friends and larger questions such as "what is love?" My tween will email me his list of questions, updating it on an ongoing basis, and it is a good starting point in keeping the communication channels open.

2. If you have a tween who is a particularly musical or likes to express himself through poetry, you might encourage your child to write a song. You might listen to a song that your child likes and notice different aspects, like many songs have titles, choruses, bridges, etc. Or that many songs rhyme or are about certain subjects. You could write a song together, or perhaps commission your tween for a song, perhaps asking for a song you all can sing as a family or maybe a song for an upcoming holiday. You can also encourage poetry writing through magnetic poetry, keeping it always available on your fridge.

3. Your tween might not be ready to face a blank journal by himself, so if you want to encourage daily writing or reflective writing, you might give a journal that allows your tween to fill in sections and have guided writing exercises. One option is Tween You & Me, a journal which focuses on building self-esteem in your tween. If you do give a blank journal, don't be surprised that your child doesn't think he has enough to write in it. I like to use blank journals to encourage drawing or writing down ideas, or lists of things the tween wants or has done. I have found that this age group needs guidance when it comes to the blank page.

4. I encourage my tween to write letters or emails. Emails seem to be particularly attractive to this age group. If your tween's typing skills aren't there yet, you might ask your tween to write the email on paper and type it out for her. With long letters or emails, sometimes I agree to write or type my tween's ideas. Many times your tween's ideas will be so fast that their fingers can't keep up. You might think your child isn't really writing if they are narrating you a letter, but it is still part of the writing process that they should be encouraged to explore. They can practice handwriting or spelling with other writing exercises. You can get your child his own email address through yahoo.com. Christmas time is great for writing because you can encourage your children to write letters to Santa.

5. The old tried and true writing exercise is encouraging your tween to write a children's book. If you aren't sure where to start, there are some great books for tweens that have story-starters and discuss parts of a story. In Once Upon A Time Creative Writing, you get almost unlimited ideas for your tween to explore. Or, you can both look at a few favorite books and use them as models for your tween's own book. Your tween's book can be elaborate and well-illustrated or simple and short. It can be a gift for a younger sibling or a memento for a relative.