Keep a Journal

• One of the easiest activities for a young child to engage in is journal writing. Allow your child to pick out her own journal from the local office supply store. Encourage her to write in her journal each day. Instruct her in what things she should write about: activities, feelings, thoughts, frustrations, and so on. If her writing abilities are still limited, encourage her to draw pictures and then write a short sentence to describe each one. Assure her that her journal will be private and that no one will read it without her permission. This encourages honesty and allows the child to voice her emotions on paper without fear that someone will chastise her.
  
  

Unusual Pen Pals

• Many children do not enjoy writing letters to friends and family, but what if they could write a letter to someone else? Urge your child to write a letter to an imaginary pen pal. This pen pal can be a character from a book, a movie star, an alien, a sea creature, or whatever else you can think of. Allow the child to write whatever he wants in the letter, but help him by ensuring he knows to whom he is writing. Encourage him to ask questions about his pen pal. For another variation, the child can write letters in the voice of another character. For example, the child could write the letter as if he were a firefighter telling about a recent fire or Pinocchio writing about his desire to become a real boy. Inspire him to improve his spelling, vocabulary, and penmanship, but don't push him too hard. The most important thing is to keep the activity enjoyable. The rest will come with practice.
  
  

"How To" Articles

• Spur your child into writing "how to" paragraphs by using the following scenario: "An alien has just landed on our planet. He knows nothing about our way of life. He speaks our language, but he doesn't understand about our actions, our foods or our clothes. We need to teach him how to survive in our world." From there, assign various writing activities such as "How to tie your shoes," "How to brush your teeth" or "How to eat pancakes." Demonstrate how to write the process one step at a time. Your child may need help with the first few, but after a while, she'll have no trouble at all. In fact, she may even come up with some new paragraph ideas.
  
  

Story Starters

• Story starters, as the name implies, are items that stimulate a story idea. These items can be pictures, toys, lines from another story, people or events. For first-graders, the easiest story starter is to give your child a beginning sentence or two and then allow him to make up the rest of the story. An example of such a story starter is as follows: "It was a cold, dark morning. The snow, which had fallen all night, covered the ground in a great white blanket. When Tom walked out his front door, he saw something very unusual." If your child is struggling, ask some questions to help spur his imagination. What did Tom see? Why is that unusual? What do you think he did? Story starters like this one can be found in creative writing books as well as online. At this point, don't be overly concerned with spelling and sentence structure. The most important thing is that the child is being encouraged (and allowed) to use his imagination to create a story of his own.