Creative Writing

Writing skills are an important part of communication, but WOW, why are schools demanding so much from 6 and 7 year olds? They’ve barely been on the planet, LOL! Why would they know how to communicate well via writing when they are still trying to learn verbal or social communication skills?

During the pandemic, my son would get writing lessons sent home (virtually). He had to write, draft and edit 2-3 paragraphs about a non-fiction topic he and his class were reading about in English Language Arts (ELA). Not a big deal, but why have we gone from basic sentences, skipping (more like leaping) over grammar instruction to, somehow, expecting 6-7 year olds to write paragraphs about an important (boring) topic? It didn’t make sense to me. He was never assigned any homework that focused on the basic skills of grammar.

That was one out of many reasons the hubster and I decided that e-learning during the pandemic wasn’t working. We even witnessed a child crying during a zoom class because of all the stress. We thought he and his fellow classmates were missing out on some fundamental basics that were taught to us as children.

Where was the opportunity for the children to write about something they enjoyed? This would have been a great place to start, and it would have been a perfect opportunity to see where each child needed to improve. But keeping it real, how would teachers be able to meet those basic needs, virtually? So, we decided to homeschool our son.

Homeschooling opened many doors to meet and quickly adjust to the needs of our son. He has some signs of autism and possibly ADHD. He also has been officially diagnosed with expressive language disorder and has to have speech therapy. I ain’t gonna lie, this homeschooling ish was frustrating. However, along with the frustration were many triumphs. I feel he was able to get a strong foundation in the area of writing skills and his favorite subject, math. His weakest subject, from what I observed during his short time in eLearning, was indeed writing. He loathed writing. I needed to find an effective way to teach writing assignments to my class of one. LOL! I had to find a way to make it fun and less of a chore.

He needed an emergency intervention LOL! So, I researched as much as I could about reluctant young writers.

In my search, I found this amazing book called Secrets of Storytelling: A Creative Writing Workbook For Kids by Natalie Rompella (Amazon was my friend during this trying time.). On page 64 it asks: What if you were a character in one of your favorite stories? Then it asks you to pick a scene from the book and insert yourself into the story…

Our son is a huge fan of the Captain Underpants series. He has finished reading 11 of the epic novels. For this awesome writing activity, he of course chose to insert himself into one of the stories in the series. So cool!

Enjoy this creative writing project by our son, Clay of Clay + Stone. He did pretty well LOL! :)

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Captain Underpants walked into the room and saw Clay. Clay was looking at his bookshelf searching for a book to read. Then Captain Underpants said, “I need your help, Clay!” “What do you mean?” Clay responded.

“I need your help fighting Tippy!”, he yelled.

Clay shouted with excitement. “Oh. Okay! But I need tools to fight Tippy!”

“That’s okay; we can find some!” Captain Underpants exclaimed.

After they found some tools, they fought you-know-who… Tippy.

Tippy laughed. “HAW HAW HAW!”

Captain Underpants smiled. “Ooooooh Tiiiiiipppppy? Look who I have.”

“What is that kid doing here?” Tippy asked.

“He’s my sidekick.”, said Captain Underpants.

Tippy frowned and shouted, “LET’S FIGHT!”

*Clay’s attempt at a Flip-O-Rama*

“Great Job!”, shouted Captain Underpants. “We beat Tippy!”

Clay proudly said, “Thank you. If you have trouble, call me.”

“Oh look!” said Jasper. “It’s George and Harold!”

Captain Underpants looked over and said, “Cool, we saved them.”

The End.