Writing prompts for children?

[[ Insert name Here ]]

I would love to hear some ideas for interesting writing prompts for an elementary-school aged child. Her father and I are trying to work with her on handwriting, grammar, vocabulary retention and creative thinking. However, our problem is working at her level, so we end up setting the bar so high that the work shoots right past "challenging" and into "frustrating", which is the opposite of what we want.

[t o l e k s z i]

Hmm... I remember keeping a daily journal in elementary school with a daily writing prompt, is that what she's doing? I feel like that would also help (the frequency of writing a little each day) with making it less frustrating for her.

As far as prompts go I remember a few of my favorites being ones like... If you could be any animal, what would you be, and why? And then asking, what would you eat? What animals would be your friends and what animals would be your enemies? Prompts that kind of build off of the general idea seem to help them get creative on their own. Maybe, if you could have one special power what would it be, and why? What would you do with it and how would you help people with it? Or, you're walking in a forest and you see a white rabbit. It runs off, and you decide to follow it. Where does the white rabbit take you and what does it look like? Who lives there and what are they doing? That sort of thing.

I hope that helped. 3nodding

[[ Insert name Here ]]

t o l e k s z i

Hmm... I remember keeping a daily journal in elementary school with a daily writing prompt, is that what she's doing? I feel like that would also help (the frequency of writing a little each day) with making it less frustrating for her.

As far as prompts go I remember a few of my favorites being ones like... If you could be any animal, what would you be, and why? And then asking, what would you eat? What animals would be your friends and what animals would be your enemies? Prompts that kind of build off of the general idea seem to help them get creative on their own. Maybe, if you could have one special power what would it be, and why? What would you do with it and how would you help people with it? Or, you're walking in a forest and you see a white rabbit. It runs off, and you decide to follow it. Where does the white rabbit take you and what does it look like? Who lives there and what are they doing? That sort of thing.

I hope that helped. 3nodding

It's something like a journal, in that we've laid down the plan to be writing something like half and page or so each night, time permitting. This is all extracurricular, though. Her teacher sends out a little form at report card time that the students fill in with "What subjects are you good at?" and "what subjects do you need to work on, and what can you do to get better" and a section for the parents to fill in how they'll help their student achieve their goals, which is really cool IMO. So she identified that her writing needs work, so this is of of the ways we're working with her.

I totally asked her what animal she would be last night, before I came back and saw this! Spooky. I like the rabbit one, personally, but I think it would fluster her if she were asked to invent things. That's the area that she's really challenged with. Most of her grammar and spelling problems boil down to not paying attention to what she's writing, but being asked to make connections on her own or think outside of the box shuts her down immediately. I think the superpower one is a good idea though.

[lullar]

I've worked with students before on this subject matter, but unfortunately, they were of a different age than your daughter. Still, you could always try to make her write more by giving her a picture exercise. Find any piece of art online and show it to your daughter. Ask her to imagine a scene or to describe what she sees in full detail. For my own students, I would give them a scenic painting of a dancing couple and ask them to write a story about what could possibly be happening in the picture. This exercise is always a good starting exercise if students are stuck and/or have writer's block.

Also, another good exercise to get students to write is putting on certain types of music. The beats of a song sometimes help form the mood of a story or of any writing.

I really like tolekszi's answer too.
Another exercise you could try is to pick random objects like a pair of dice or a doll and then ask your daughter to write a story where both items are used.

Hope this helps. God Bless.

[t o l e k s z i]

This will sound completely unrelated but I'm very serious when I ask what her diet's like? There are a lot of additives that will kill creativity because it alters brain function so much. Fluoridated toothpaste or water, ADD meds, vaccines, artificial sugars, all those will alter brain function and quell creativity. It could be that it is literally physically difficult for her to be imaginative so the prompts won't do much unless they're literally guiding her along. Some kids are also just very very logic-minded and learning to mimic something will help her better to be creative than prompts if it interests her like painting, coloring books, maybe even try asking her to write a story with a stricter prompt? Say, write a story with a prince, a princess, and a dragon. The prince saves the princess from the dragon and they live happily ever after, then just ask her to write the story.

[marshmallowcreampie]

The painting/image thing that's been suggested is good. Show her any picture and ask her to write a story about what's happening.

You could also try for alternate versions of existing stories. Maybe ask her to write an underwater version of Cinderella, or a prehistoric Little Red Riding Hood where the title character is a badass. Or something.

[LadySnark]

When I was her age I didn't have issues of creativity but I would get seriously frustrated on those same kinds of prompts. If she is like me, the it could be that it isn't that she isn't creative, but that she has so many ideas popping into her head that she gets frustrated from all the options and doesn't know what to do.

When I was her age I always needed an example of how someone else went about the prompt before I could write my own. I never copied their story, but seeing someone else's work seemed to push one idea ahead of the others and everything would become much more manageable.

Other than that the painting/image idea is good, so is the idea to use existing stories and tweek them. I also love the rabbit prompt.

If you want to try my idea I suggest giving a prompt and then writing a really short paragraph and letting her read that paragraph. She of course, would write more than that, but just for an example it should be fine.

[FindingJackie]

I like the idea someone else gave about giving her a picture to describe.

Otherwise, when I was a kid, I remember getting prompts like "This happens, what do you do" (with things that could really happen to her) or to describe things she loves, or jobs she thinks are interesting and why.

You can also try asking her for more imaginative things like to describe the life of a princess or make a story with a fairytale creature in it, but sometimes children are somewhat... secretive about that. Depends on the age. When I was a kid, I wrote a lot, but the stories I wrote about unicorns and heroines saving the world and giant bees and such? No one got to read them. They were my thing. When someone asked me to write something for them, I was much more conventional. It's like I didn't want to bare my soul to them or something. 3nodding

I hope this all works out. It might take a while, especially if she knows she's being evaluated about her hand-writing and grammar. It's a lot of things to think about and it can make the kid nervous.

Even when tutoring teenagers and adults, I found when they're struggling with language quality they don't develop their ideas as much because they feel like they have to pay more attention to the writing itself (in school, at least)