How to get your kids Excited about Writing – Scriptive WriteStories
One of the questions I am often asked is how to get my kids to love writing. I love writing, so my kids should also love writing, right? Well, that isn’t always the case. And to get your kids excited about writing, you have to have tools that will encourage that creativity.
Writing is one of those subjects that homeschoolers often struggle with. You don’t know how to get your kids interested in the writing process. Perhaps you aren’t sure of your own writing ability so you don’t know how to encourage your kids. Or you actually love writing, but have been unable to translate that into excitement for your kids.
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Today we are going to explore one tool that I believe will help encourage your kids with writing – Scriptive WriteStories. And with it being the holiday season, it is the perfect time to grab this as an educational gift for your own kids, or any children in your life! You can use my coupon code – TOWNSEND33 – for 33% off!
Don’t forget to enter the giveaway at the bottom of the post!
What is WriteStories?
WriteStories is a fun, online writing platform that encourages your emerging storyteller to write their own stories using quality illustrations as inspiration. It is geared towards students in Kindergarten through 8th grade.
The books available are beautifully illustrated. There are books that most children will be familiar with such as Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, The Story of the Three Little Pigs, and My Father’s Dragon. There are also some books that I am unfamiliar with.
If your emerging storyteller is not yet comfortable with creating their own original story, having the opportunity to retell a familiar story will help build confidence as they dive into this fun program. I love that there is also the option for voice-to-text, so that if your student is not a strong writer yet, they can still participate and see their story idea come to life.
If you have an older student, their creativity can shine with some of the longer books. Taking time to transform an old favorite like “My Father’s Dragon” into a completely new story!
Interactive Parent & Student Dashboards
There is a beautiful interface for both the student and the parent. The parent dashboard easily allows you to assign books, give deadlines for when content is due, and see the progress student is making.
You can manage your student’s settings right through the parent dashboard. I love that there is an option to change settings for individual students. So, if you have an older and younger student you can have different options with the voice-to-text. If you have an older student, you may not want that option on for them. Or, you may allow them to start with voice-to-text, but then turn it off for future assignments.
In the Parent Dashboard you can also see the entire library of illustrated books available. This gives you the ability to go through and look at the different titles. When you hover over each book, it gives you detailed information like how many pages the book has. It also allows you to assign the book to a student, add it to your favorites, and preview the book.
The WriteStories Student Dashboard also gives your student the ability to see the library. They can preview and favorite specific books as well. So if a particular book catches their eye, they favorite it, and then you get a notification in your own dashboard that they have assigned themselves a book! The student dashboard is colorful and fun, and has great animations like a magic wand mouse cursor.
WriteStories: The Holiday Gift that Keeps on Giving
One of my favorite types of gifts to give are educational gifts. In fact it is one of the categories we add to the want, need, wear, read gift giving practice. WriteStories is going to be perfect for the child in your life because it isn’t one and done. It isn’t one project that gets built and then pushed to the side, or a toy that becomes boring after using for a few weeks. Instead, it is something that will continue to help your student grow and flourish as a writer.
You and your child can choose from a variety of fun illustrated books and get to writing. As your child is writing, they can highlight and change the color, size, and font of the writing. They can also move the text box around the illustrated page to get the placement that they want. If they want to add an additional text box to the page, they can do that as well. One feature that I am excited for is the read feature, where it will read the story that you have written back to you!
As I said above, if your child is just starting out with writing, or is a struggling writer, you can choose a classic they already know and use the voice-to-text feature to retell the story they know. It may not be exactly the same story, but that is the point! It is helping them to grow in their creativity taking a story they already know and starting a retelling. I bet by the end of the book, they will have added in new details to make it their own.
The Bottom Line
WriteStories is one of those gifts that is going to keep everyone engaged for a long time. I love that it can be used as part of your language arts curriculum for homeschool. It is also wonderful to have the voice-to-text option. I think that is something that will be a huge help for emerging writers and give them the confidence they need to keep making progress in their creative writing.
Storytelling is something that we all can enjoy, and seeing these beautifully illustrated books come to life with the words your child creates will be something that you can enjoy for a long time to come. It is an affordable, creative writing gift for the child in your life that doesn’t have to be put away when you get back to homeschool after the holiday season. The books can be used over and over again with new stories.
Something fun that we enjoy is group story-writing. We can all go around and add a sentence to the book and come up with something fun (and most of the time a bit crazy) as a family activity for the whole family, not just the younger set.
Plans start at $13.50 per quarter for 1-2 students. There is also an option for purchasing a yearly subscription. Don’t forget to use my code – TOWNSEND33 – to get 33% off your purchase.
Giveaway!
Now for the fun part! I am giving away a 1-year subscription to WriteStories! This will be a perfect gift to give to your children this holiday season. Just enter below, and remember you can come back each day to share my post for more entries!
This post is in partnership with Scriptive WriteStories. As always, all opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting Townsend House!
