My children do not like to write very often. The two older boys are only seven and nine but they don’t even like to do copy work very often. I have spent a small fortune on different copy work books that I thought they would love. Nope. It just doesn’t interest them. My nine year old loves coming up with stories but hasn’t written anything down. This got me thinking about how I could motivate them to write more.

Before the holidays, I bought some writing journals. I put their names on them and waited until we started school back up after the New Year to give it to them. I presented them each with their own little “Creative Writing” journal and gave them the guidelines for using them. They are as follows:

  1. Just be creative. No fuss. No assignments. Write a story about something that happened to you or make up something completely fictitious.
  2. It is not graded or corrected. However you think a word is spelled, that’s how it’s spelled in your creative writing journal. I will read each entry and discuss the corrections but I will not be “grading” it.
  3. Must be at least two sentences. This is the only real requirement. I want it to be something they have to think about.
  4. Draw a picture to go with the story. The journals I gave to them have a spot at the top for pictures. The pictures don’t have to be elaborate or in color. But, they must go with the story.
  5. Always date your work. I want to see how they progress with the creativeness and writing skills. At the end of this year, I will go over each journal with the children so I can show them how much progress they have made. If I see areas that have needed consistent correction, we will work on those separately.

Growing up, I loved creative writing. I love writing in general. I wrote a novel in high school. It was very cheesy but I enjoyed doing it so much. I also wrote hundreds of poems. My oldest son is very interested in poetry as well. We read poetry daily and he has learned a lot of different techniques. He wants to start writing poetry for himself. This journal will help him to be able to express himself through this writing style.

I don’t expect my children to take after me in everything. By giving them the tools to be more creative with their writing skills, I hope they will grow to love writing as much as I do. The more they write, the more they will gain the skills needed to become good writers in the future.

Here are some writing notebooks and journals found on Rainbow Resource Center’s website: