Articles

Hot Writing Topics For Kids

by Julie Bogart

Dumb writing assignments fill language arts curricula. Educators ask your kids to write about the alien that visits the cafeteria, they challenge kids to improve on Aesop and they expect a child to write a cogent paragraph about Christmas... that mind-numbing topic that is so huge, any writer freezes trying to wrestle it down into a few sentences.

In the meantime, your kids and mine are spending precious hours every day fantasizing about things that really interest them. Star Wars, nerf guns, American Girl Dolls, baseball, buying a car, gymnastics, mixing potions, telling secrets, building a fort,--these are the kinds of fantasies that kids have.

As developing people, they're trying out opinions, forming beliefs and interpreting their observations. They'll talk endlessly about the things that are important to them. Then no one asks them to write about any of these driving thoughts. What a tragedy.

Before our kids can learn to write about what they don't know and care even less about, they need to experience the thrill of reading their own thoughts, ideas and beliefs on paper. And they need topics that draw these out.

Here is my growing list of "hot topics" for kids. Many of my students have taught me what triggers the most words on a page. See if any of these work for your kids.

1. Family pet: Dogs, guinea pigs, cats, bunnies, horses—all seem to evoke much more lucid prose than any other topic. Why? Passion—identification and lots of personal observation.

2. Latest craze animated figures: Pokemon is the current rage. Still, there was Mario and Mickey Mouse before them.

3. Sports: This one is tricky since so many kids just "do" a sport without a lot of passion. But for some, their chosen sport is truly a "knows a lot about" category.

4. Science: Surprisingly, I have seen many boys especially write very well about a scientific topic that would intimidate many a mother. Everything from weather (tornadoes, hurricanes, thunderstorms) to wild animals, gravity to eco systems.

5. Weapons: This topic is very boyish. They love tanks from WWI and II, they love machine guns, espionage mechanisms etc. Let them study, explore and codify their findings.

6. Nature: Charlotte Mason fans all know about nature journals. Girls especially, enjoy writing about their observations of birds, weather changes, seasons and other critter visitors. Help them include accurate labels. Encourage descriptive detail. Boys often enjoy recording statistics: how many white-breasted sparrows visited the yard during a given week, records of temperatures at different times of the day, and so on.

7. Friends and Family members: A notoriously girlie thing to do. Girls seem to like relationships and friends are the best source. They also like to describe people and scenes related to people.

8. Celebrations: Sometimes this topic is a total dud. If it's contrived, it never goes anywhere (like: We just celebrated Christmas—write about it). But when there has been a unique experience associated with a holiday, the child can at least hook into something specific and write about it.

9. Fantasy: Star Wars, Star Trek, Narnia Chronicles, Redwall—these are inspiring kids to make up their own worlds. When they are given freedom, they will often attempt to duplicate what they read.

What does your child like writing about? Ask them. Then post their responses on the Brave Writer Discussion Board. We'd love to hear from you.