I’ve kept a journal for a couple of decades and I’m trying to encourage my children to do the same. There are different kinds of journals and journaling they can do like a picture journal where they create artwork; dream journal where they can describe the dreams they have during sleep or dreams for the future; and poetry or prose journals. The list can be quite endless. Today, let’s talk about fun and easy journal prompts you can give to your kids to fuel their writing muscle.
There are a few things you should keep in mind when it comes to journaling and children: the child’s interests, their writing ability and their age/grade level. For children just beginning to write you can prompt them to draw picture stories. Those journals should be a bit larger with space to draw a picture and write a few words. You can pre-write prompts on the pages like cat, dog, tree, school or friend.
Journal Prompts For Kids
Let’s start with these journal prompts, which can be modified for ages 6 to 16:
- Why do you like (insert name of favorite television show) and who are your favorite characters? Write a story about you meeting your favorite characters (or the actors) from that show.
- When you are 20 years old what do you want to be doing? How do you think life will be?
- Sometimes siblings say hurtful things, how do you feel when you have a fight with your brother/sister?
- There are three cats, two giraffes, five dogs, 10 birds and an elephant. If you had all of those animals do you think you can train them to play together? What kinds of games would they play?
- If you could live in any kind of house you want, what would it look like? What would it be made of?
- If parents stayed home while children go to work what kind of jobs do you think children can have? Would you want to have a job where you work for someone else or would you own your own business? If you owned your own business, what type of business will it be?
- What subjects do you like the best: science, math, geography, language arts, art, music, technology or engineering? What makes your favorite fun and interesting?
- What if you could do absolutely anything during the summer, what would be your choice(s)?
- If you could tell your mommy and/or daddy anything you want, what would it be?
- What goals do you have for your education?
I particularly like the last prompt because one of my youngest child’s teachers had her students do this goal activity during the 2013/2014 school year. They needed three: one for education, family and friends. For the educational prompt my then 7-year-old daughter wrote she wanted to be in the gifted class. We talked about what needed to be done to achieve it and wrote a couple of action steps. And she reached her goal.
BONUS
Here are a few short prompt choices you can give your children:
- Best birthday part
- Books vs. movies
- Family vacations
- Describe your bedroom
- What animal would you be?
- Create your own video game
- A special gift
- Favorite holiday
As you can see there are quite a few journal prompts for children you can use to spark their imagination and fuel their mind to write. While they’re writing in their journal, consider writing in yours and have fun.
Image: iStockPhoto
