Kids Writing, Prompts and Publishing

As children start to develop intellectually, parents start to look for more activities to help them grow and learn. Kids writing is one activity that will help them develop a number of skills, as well as make them more interested in their world and how it works. It is important to remember, though, that children will not write the way adults do.

Just as every adult has their own creative process, the writing process for kids will be different for every child and may look nothing like the writing process for adults. While adults tend to think in a rational, linear way, kids tend to think in a more random, scattered way. They may make connections and associations that adults never would, and in fact make little sense to adults. It is easy enough to give kids a few writing prompts, some basic ideas to help them get started.

These prompts should be simple enough for the child to understand, but sophisticated enough to challenge them. Too difficult, and kids might get frustrated; too simple and they may get bored; either way, they are less likely to enjoy writing. Kids journal writing and story writing are probably the most common forms. Journal writing can be about what the child did today, what they learned in school and where they went. It can also be about what they thought, how they felt about something they saw or what they home to do tomorrow. Story writing is the more creative form, allowing the child to use their imagination, to invent characters and events.

There are some common benefits to both these types of writing, and some more particular to each. Any form of kids writing will develop their language and communication skills. Young writers will learn to use language clearly and concisely, to form simple sentences that are easily understood. As the progress, they can begin to use more sophisticated sentences, with different grammatical structures. They will also expand their vocabulary as they advance. At first, children are likely to stick with words they know. Later, they will begin to look for new words, either in a dictionary or thesaurus, through online learning, or by asking parents and teachers what words they can use.

This will be especially important in journal writing, when they will want to write about something they have seen and use more words to describe it. Kids journal writing will also develop their observational skills and memory, teaching them to pay attention to what is going on around them and recall it later. Critical thinking skills will also come in when they start to analyze what they have seen and heard. On the other hand, kids story writing will stretch their creativity. Whatever type of kids writing they do, it will develop their mind and imagination.