Six Creative Writing Projects for Kids

Grade-school kids love to write creatively, even if they don't have the best writing skills. If your kids are looking for something creative to do, why not try challenging them with a story idea and asking them to write about it.

It's raining outside. Your grade-schooler is sitting around watching TV or contemplating how to bug her older siblings. Time to jump into action as the parent with the creative ideas for rainy days. There's paint. Done that. There's cutting and pasting. Done that and swept up the scraps of paper. There's play dough. Done that, added water, did it some more. What creative activity is left for you to give your kids to do? How about writing?

Writing?

Writing doesn't just have to be for school and it doesn't have to be something your child stumbles upon on her own devices. You encourage your kids to do fine arts, read, play sports in their free time and see these things as fun- why not do the same for writing?

Maybe your kid doesn't have the greatest writing skills or the biggest writing vocabulary in her class. (Though you may have noticed she's pretty good at spelling phonetically...) Or maybe your kid has already begun to associate writing with homework and boring things. These are two great reasons to turn writing into a fun at-home activity. By giving your grade-schoolers some creative writing prompts in a casual, fun atmosphere, they can experiment, not worry about getting everything right, and practice their writing skills at the same time. They may begin to love writing or at least not dislike it.

To make creative writing even more fun, consider giving your child a special notebook, funky paper, cool colored pens or pencils or other writing accessories to help him connect writing can be fun and exciting.

Writing Project For Kids 1: Create A Dessert
Whether it's cookies, birthday cake, candy or a combination of all three, kids love sweets. Ask your child to design his or her own ideal desert. Let them go crazy mentioning the content from flavors to colors to size and shape. You may never be able to actually cook the special treat your child writes about, but he will definitely have a great time coming up with the details. Talk about a kid in a candy shop.

Writing Project for Kids 2: Remember A Fun or Funny Family Story
Kids have great memories. Ask your child to write about a funny thing that happened on a vacation, at a family holiday party, or maybe just on a regular old day. Ask them to remember things like time of day and season, what actually happened and how other people reacted. A child's recollection of a classic family moment? Does that sound like scrap book material or what?

Writing Project for Kids 3: Open A Store
Your child probably enjoys shopping, whether at the toy store, with you at the grocery store, or in his own make-believe world. He also may enjoy playing with fake money, running a cash register and making other kids - or you - pay for items. Well, take that shopping love and ask your child to convert it into a writing project. What does your child sell, how much do things cost? What does the store look like? Where is it located? Who else works there? What do these other people do? Don't forget to ask him to give the store a name.

Writing Project for Kids 4: Discover A Jungle of New Animals
Let your child's creative juices flow by asking her to take you on a tour of the jungle, discovering animals no one has ever seen before. Ask her to create animals of her own including things like names, shapes, markings, colors, sizes, what they eat and what sounds they make when they roar.

Writing Project for Kids 5: Guessing Game
In this writing variation of 20 Questions or ISpy ask your child to pick an object in the room or maybe a person, food, TV show or anything else that can be described and write about it. Then, as he reads back his list one item at a time, you try to guess what it is. Fun to play with groups of kids!

Writing Project For Kids 6: A Perfect Day Would Be….
Are there places your child would love to go? Things she's been begging to do? Ask your child to write about a perfect day including who would be involved, what activities would take place, what places would be visited and of course, what everyone would eat!

Remember, while these are activities meant to help your child with writing, mainly, they're just fun activities that involve writing. If your child can only write words or simple sentences, that's fine. As long as he or she is writing, and having fun, then everything's going write...I mean, right!