How to Teach Creative Writing in Your Homeschool

Writing is a skill that will be useful to your student until well after college. But creative writing isn’t easy for everyone to teach. Kind of like how math is almost impossible for some of us to teach….

But have no fear! I’ve got some great tips on getting your kids writing more, creating stories, using their imaginations and developing lifelong skills.

First Things First

Let’s start with the most basic action you can take, even at a super young age: Read to your kids! Reading good stories lays the foundation to writing good stories. The advice that published authors give to aspiring authors: If you want to be a good writer, be a great reader.

Read to your young kids. When they are older and can read on their own, let them choose fun books. Don’t stick to educational or recommended books from a list. Bring them to the library and tell them to go wild, or as wild as you can go in a library.

Write Poetry

Read a few poems so your kids get the idea and then ask them to write a poem. If they don’t know what to write about, give them a few prompts: write about their favorite animal, a scary place, the weather, or even something simple like describing a tree. The only rule is it has to rhyme at the end of every line or every other line.

Writing a poem with the focus on making the words rhyme forces the kids to think out of the box and to use their imaginations to come up with words that fit with the theme.

Writing Prompts

Give your students a new writing prompt every day. This helps them use their imaginations every day and gives them handwriting and spelling practice. Set a timer for 15 minutes so it isn’t so intimidating to them.

Writing prompts don’t always have to be a one-liner idea. Use a picture and get them to use it in a story. Use a favorite story or movie and let them write themselves into it as the main character. There are tons of ways to get the imaginations going each day.

Don’t kill the spark!

I know it’s hard to see grammatical and spelling errors and not point them out. It physically pains me to see grammar errors and not speak up. But don’t kill the spark ignited in those little minds! Focus on the story, on their ideas and praise them for it. Remember, even the most famous, best-selling authors out there have rough drafts full of errors. That’s why editors have jobs.

Bonus if you have more than one student – let them swap papers and correct each other’s work.

Ideas and prompts to try:

(feel free to change these up in your homeschool!)

I didn’t know unicorns were real until I saw…
My cousin and I found a bag of gold coins in the woods and we…
I woke up in the woods and heard an animal…
When I grow up I want to be a…
The best day of my life was when…
I had a crazy dream about…
The thing that scares me most is…
If I was a rabbit I would…
The day I climbed into a space shuttle and it took off…
If I could go back in time I’d…
400 cats just ran into my front yard…
My hero is… because…
If I could fly I’d…
I just won one million dollars so I’m going to…
If no place on earth had any electricity…
I accidentally made myself invisible and…
I just saved someone’s life by…
If I was president for just one day I’d…
My favorite animal is a …
If I was left alone in a zoo for a night I’d…

Try all or a few of these prompts to get started. Make it fun. Remember to not stress over grammar and spelling errors. If there are quite a few errors, wait until the next day or a later time to let them go back as “editors” to make corrections. For the time being, let them be writers.

Writing Tools

To make things even more fun, have a cool designated notebook and pen/pencil for your student’s creative writing. This can be the “magic” notebook where awesome stories come out or the story pen.

I personally love writing with fun pencils. I’m also obsessed with cool notebooks and have a stash of blank, empty notebooks that my family will wonder about after I’m gone.

Here are a few cute notebooks and pens to check out as a reward or as a pathway to more creative writing for your students.

So get started and help your homeschool students grow their imaginations and strengthen their creative writing abilities.