Two of my children are natural writers. They write comic books and plays. My 10 year old daughter has even written a few songs. Those piano lessons are paying off! I love hearing them read their writing. They are always so involved in the story because they crafted it. This year, teaching kids to love writing is starting with reading a lot of books. Let me tell you what I put together.

This can work as summer writing enrichment or homeschool writing curriculum.

I have this vision for our next school year. Now that the kids are reading and writing independently on their grade level work, we can go deeper.

Teaching Kids to Love Writing

Reading to my children has sparked their love for writing. I started reading books to my babies from an early age. Even when they could not sit up. I could rock them and read to them.

That cuddle time gives reading a positive association for children. Reading becomes safety and love. I love that! Often boys can be really resistant to writing. If this is the case in your house, one idea is to start a boys writing club.

Use the idea in this blog post to form a writing curriculum for homeschool use or as an after-school enrichment activity.

The core focus of my writing lessons this year will be reading some great children’s books out loud to the kids.

Homeschool Writing Curriculum

There is technical writing and the creative expository writing. Both are skills and worth learning. I am using the book Craft Lessons as one resource for this writing curriculum. Unlocking Kids Brain Power: Semi-Weekly Writing Prompts to Expand Young Minds is the other.

Craft Lessons leads you through teaching elements of writing a great story using great children’s literature.

I ordered the books recommended in Craft Lessons on Half Price Books and Amazon. You could check them out of your library as you need them. Do what works for your budget.

Craft Lessons is broken up into sections. There are lessons for grades K through 2; lessons for grades 3-4; grades 5-8. It will repeat some lessons for my older kids, introduce new concepts to challenge my younger ones and finish off with challenging all of my kids (grades 2-8) to stretch their learning.

I plan to teach writing conventions and technical skills with the literature and lessons in Craft Lessons.

If your child absolutely resists writing, try these tips for a child who hates writing.

Unlocking Kids’ Brain Power

To encourage children to write in a more impromptu way, I am using the book of writing prompts, Unlocking Kids’ Brain Power by Jennifer Ayer Drake. It is a handy tool for teaching kids to love writing.

There are 2 writing prompts each week for an entire year! It is a wonderful exercise to teach kids to love writing. I plan to read the prompt as a morning exercise to inspire the kids to write. Then we will read the selected literature and go through the mini lesson in Craft Lessons.

Combining the benefits of both resources, we can break up our literature/writing focus to make writing more fun.

Writing is a major focus for our homeschool year this year. Last year we covered a lot of in depth science topics: Geology, Chemistry, Botany and Arthropods. You can teach every subject within science. You can also teach every subject within writing!

The books we will use to read in order to learn how writers write are filled with great lessons. Social studies topics, science and nature, social-emotional and interpersonal communication. We will discuss a lot through the kids’ writing and through the books we will read.

I am so excited to dive in. Teaching kids to love writing in your home may look like using the writing prompts book Unlocking Kids’ Brain Power as a homework activity. You may want to start with it as a way to limit any summer slide of academic skills. That is a great way to keep kids writing skills up.

You may be homeschooling like me. Craft Lessons and Unlocking Kids’ Brain Power make a very well rounded homeschool writing curriculum. It will hone skills in the older kids. It will challenge the younger ones.

If you teach multi-age whole group, you can use this format to balance that homeschool juggling act of multiple kids in multiple grades.

Take a look at these two writing tools for teaching kids to love writing. Tell me what you think! Leave a comment with what you are doing this summer or fall to keep your kids writing skills up.