Creative Writing with Greeting Cards

I am so excited about being one of the featured blogs on Welcome Wednesday sponsored by Take It From Me!  Thanks so much to all of you for taking the time to hop over!  I hope you enjoy browsing my blog and find a new idea or two to share with your children, grandchildren, students, or even the random next door neighbor...our kids need all the support they can get these days.

When teaching creative writing or journaling, you will always have a student or two that can never think of something to write about.  Here is a cute idea to help them get past that...

• Cut the picture part off of several greeting cards.  Some of my favorites include animals.  Ya know the one with a bloodhound driving an old truck or the little bitty, white dog that's having a bad hair day???
• Take a page protector and insert 4 card pictures into it.  (front, back, top, bottom)
• Give each child a page protector and let them pick a picture to write about.  

 Some of the pictures you find on cards are just adorable, and I have yet to have a student elementary all the way to high school not find something to write about after looking at the silly cards.  They enjoy this activity so much, and can't wait for me to get new pictures for them to write about.

For younger children or those that are not able to write, you can modify this activity a little and still get some great use out of your old greeting cards.

• Let them pick their favorite card
• Have them tell you a few things about the card.  
• Write down what they say for them
• Let them draw a picture to go with their writing.  They can either draw the exact picture or maybe what they think will happen next or what happened right before the picture was taken.  

 

 Enjoy!

Use Your Words ~ Language Game

A fun way to get your children to use more words (and learn new words in the process) is to play an easy guessing game with picture cards.  All you need is a bunch of cards with simple pictures on them, like coat, apple, rubber duck...anything, really!  

You can use cards from a Memory game or you could just make your own from photos, magazines, or even clip-art.  

In a 2 player game, it is noncompetitive.  Each person takes a turn to draw a card, describe the picture, and try to get the other player to guess the picture.  

For example, if you draw a card with a banana on it, you might say, "It is a yellow fruit that you peel, and monkeys like them, too."  If your child gives up on a picture, take the opportunity to make a Teachable Moment and help her come up with words to say to describe the picture.  This can be a great word-learning experience!    

In a multi-player game, it is a competitive game to see which player can get the most cards.  If you guess a picture, then you get to keep that card.  

For a little extra enrichment, label each card under the picture.  This way, you will be exposing your children to the written language as well, but still allowing non-readers to play.