1. Don’t be afraid of quiet writing time
*If you’re new around here, ROLLERCOASTER WRITING is writing without stopping for a specified amount of time as if you are riding on a rollercoaster. That means no stopping to ask for spelling, not stopping to stare out the window, just keeping the pen moving. We start small, like 2 to 3 minutes, and we’ve found that much can be accomplished in small bites of time. At camp, we kept adding on minutes each day, sometimes with short “shake your hands out breaks” in between.
2. The more kids share, the more they write
3. Writers like to illustrate too!
Surprisingly (not surprisingly?) the writing camp club with the highest number of signups this year was illustration. Not only do kids love to add pictures to their stories, but graphic novel fans also love to try their hand at creating comics. A fun resource for helping kids with illustrating and comics is this website from David Rickert. We love the “Say No to Stick Figures” printable!
We hope our three big take aways from camp sparked a few ideas for things you’d like to try with your kids! Thanks for caring about great writing experiences and letting us be part of your inbox.
