4 innovative creative writing activities for tweens
Every child is bound to have different sets of interest. While some may be interested in reading books or practising music, others may have a penchant for STEM activities and sports. Creative writing is one such activity that is perhaps liked by most youngsters who have an imaginative bent of mind. Creative writing has been known to boost the academic performance of tweens, develop a positive mindset, language and communication skills, improve out-of-the-box thinking and self-expression and explore their abilities to solve problems.
This is why, both teachers and parents need to encourage youngsters to try out different fun, exciting and engaging creative writing activities. Here is our list of 4 innovative creative writing activities tweens can try out.
Writing prompts
Writing prompts is one of the most intriguing and easiest creative writing activities for tweens. This is predominantly a group activity where the teacher or the parent can create a series of unfinished and unrelated sentences into chits, pour them into a fishing bowl and then ask each kid to pick one. After all the kids have their own chits, ask them to write a minimum 100-word paragraph inspired by the writing prompt they had selected.
Phrases on flashcards
This creative writing task is pretty straightforward. We all know flashcards are beneficial study resources, but they can also be used for fun and interesting activities like creative writing. The goal is to create a series of flashcards and ask two groups of tweens to write unique sentences on a given topic. After they are done, ask them to match them in an order. For instance, if the topic is Christmas, the phrases can be: ‘Christmas occurs on 25th December,’ ‘Christmas is also called the holiday season,’ ‘Santa Claus arrives on Christmas,’ and ‘Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday.’ Now, all they need to do is arrange them in a way that is syntactically correct and almost look like a composition at the end of the activity. The more they come up with the same ideas, the more they use their creative faculties to come up with something unique.
Letter to your future self
Composing a letter for one’s own future self is perhaps one of the most exciting and engaging creative writing activities there is. All tweens have their dreams about their careers, ambitions, and other life’s goals. During this activity, they can pour their hearts out into a letter for themselves that might come handy or just lend a feeling of nostalgia a decade or two down the line.
Story from the end to the start
Encourage tweens to indulge in their creative and imaginative skills and come up with story ideas where the ending will be decided first and then one can go on to write the rest. The most common example of this may be ‘And they lived happily ever after.’ However, you will be surprised to see how many other innovative ideas these youngsters come up with. This unconventional exercise will prove to improve their creative writing as well as cognitive abilities.