Creative Writing Worksheets from A Tasteful Cliché - for only $2.99 each

• Character and Setting Writing Prompts
  Creative writing prompts for your students (120 worksheets in all). These fun creative writing prompts involve a given character (from history, mythology, etc.) and a given setting. The student has to write a story about, or from the perspective of, the character in the given setting. An example: Write a story about a werewolf in a galaxy far, far away. Another example: Cinderella in a logging camp.

• Alien Observer Worksheets
  A fun creative writing exercise for your students. Creative writing prompts (100 in all) for your English students. They are tasked with describing an activity or object on Earth as if they were an alien scout sent to describe everything on Earth to their fellow aliens.

• Puppy Dog Tails Worksheets
  Give your students these fun writing exercises for a different kind of creative writing assignment. The students have to create a recipe for three occupations per worksheet (over 100 worksheets in all!), similar to the poem in which boys are made of "snips, snails, and puppy dog tails".

• Dull Product Advertisement Worksheets
  A creative writing and art assignment for your students. Students have to create an advertisement for an otherwise-dull household product like bow ties and door knobs. 100 prompts in all.

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Sidewalk and Table Top Hopscotch

Sidewalk and Table Top Hopscotch
By Gloria Goldsmith, Gloria@AVKO.org

Sidewalk Hopscotch is played outdoors and is so much fun, it doesn’t seem like your REALLY working on spelling! Get some chalk and use the driveway or the sidewalk area. (If you live in the country without paving or sidewalk, see Table Top Hopscotch.) Give your student(s) each a piece of chalk and have then draw LARGE boxes in any order they like but they must have both single, double boxes mixed in any order on top of one another. Make it 12 to 16 boxes single and double boxes long. Then give each child a word they will write out correctly (with your help, if needed) filling in all the boxes with different words. When done writing, then take a small rough stone with lots of edges and let them roll it along toward whatever word they want as their target. The word it lands nearest is their word.. They have to hop to the word, pick up the stone, look up at the sky and spell the word aloud. If they spell it correctly they go forward from that word. If they spelled it incorrectly, they have to come back to their last position. The goal is to go to the end and come back first. The winner should get some sort of prize. Maybe a pencil, tootsie roll, but I like a home-made Crown as King or Queen of the Hopscotch! Or course the King or Queen can do a victory dance, making it all the more fun! A nice glass of ice tea or lemonade under a shade tree is a great way for everyone to celebrate and plan their victory dance for the next contest.

Table Top Hopscotch is played in doors for winter games or if you have no sidewalks or paved driveways. It is played the same way except the student draws out the rectangles on a large piece of paper. (Tape two pieces or more together.) Use a small piece of paper wadded into a ball as your stone. And instead of hopping by foot they hop their fingers over the course, slapping their hand over the target word they are to spell. Without peeking they spell the word to you or another player and if they get it right, put a bingo chip or paperclip there to mark it while the next player has his turn. Be sure the winner gets to put on the crown and do a victory dance and everyone gets some sort or celebration.

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Homeschool.com's "101 Things to Do This Summer"

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@AVKO.org

[From Homeschool.com]

1	Make a scrapbook of everything you do this summer The Basics of Scrapbooking http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/beginners.html
2	Have a picnic Planning a Picnic http://www.the-picnic-site.com/
3	Learn how to play soccer How to Play Soccer http://www.ehow.com/PrintArticle.html?id=2044097
4	Visit another country Lonely Planet Destination Guides www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/
5	Go to a ballgame Major League Baseball Team Schedules mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/schedule/index.jsp
6	Get a job (parent permission) Teens 4 Hire www.teens4hire.org/
7	Become a photographer BetterPhoto for Kids and Teens www.betterphoto.com/photography-for-kids.asp
8	Make dinner for your family Do-It-Yourself Dinner Party Project (PDF) www.reynoldskitchens.com
9	Compare a book to a movie Compare and Contrast Essay (PDF) www.csudh.edu
10	Write a poem 30 Days of Poetry www.msrogers.com/English2/poetry/30_days_of_poetry.htm
11	Learn about fireworks How Stuff Works: Fireworks people.howstuffworks.com/fireworks.htm
12	Bake some cookies Science of Cookies www.bakingandbakingscience.com/cookies.htm
13	Take a boat ride Boat Safe Kids! www.boatsafe.com/kids/index.htm
14	Sketch a picture of your house from the outside Perspective Drawing www.artyfactory.com/perspective_drawing/perspective_1.htm
15	Go to camp Smart Start to Business http://www.youthpreneur.net/camps
16	Visit a farm 4-H Virtual Farms www.ext.vt.edu/resources/4h/virtualfarm/main.html
17	Take a walk and record the sounds Listening to Nature www.museumca.org/naturalsounds/
18	Embrace Other Cultures Culture Quest http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/cquest/
19	Keep a journal of what you do during the Summer Keepsake Diary http://kids-indoor-activities.suite101.com/article.cfm/keep_a_summer_journal
20	Cut up an old greeting card picture and make a puzzle (parent help) How to make your own jigsaw puzzle tn.essortment.com/howtomakeyour_rgzx.htm
21	Start a band Make Music! Start a Band www.mustcreate.org/kid_home/kids3_1.shtml
22	Learn how to make a movie Digital Movie Making for Kids http://www.adobe.com/education/digkids/intro_video/making_of_movie.html
23	Blow up balloons, put notes inside and hand them out to friends Message in a Balloon www.nmhct.nhs.uk/pharmacy/nmha-activities.html
24	Go backpacking The Beginning Backpacker www.backpacking.net/beginner.html
25	Learn how to oil paint Free Art Lessons http://www.interactiveartschool.com/free-art-lessons.html
26	Create a web site Lissa Explains HTML for Kids www.lissaexplains.com/
27	Go camping Go Camping America Kids Pages www.gocampingamerica.com/kidspages/
28	Learn how to use Microsoft Office Free Tutorials for Microsoft Office http://www.baycongroup.com/tutorials.htm
29	Help an elderly person with house or yard work (parent permission) 20 Great Reasons to Volunteer www.volunteermatch.org/volunteers/resources/tipstricks.jsp
30	Visit the zoo National Zoo Animal Web cams nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/default.cfm
31	Learn a foreign language Free Online Language Courses www.word2word.com/coursead.html
32	Make an obstacle course in your back yard How To Set Up An Obstacle Course www.ehow.com/how_3113_set-obstacle-course.html
33	Make a treasure hunt The Ultimate Treasure Hunt www.allthatstuff.net/treasurehunt.htm
34	View and learn about Modern Art Destination Modern Art http://www.moma.org/destination/
35	Learn about the Animals that live on our planet A Library of the World’s Animals http://www.learnanimals.com/
36	Recycle bottles and donate the money to a local charity The Internet Consumer Recycling Guide www.obviously.com/recycle/
37	Explore the Universe A Learning Center for Young Astronomers http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/StarChild.html
38	Build a tree house The Tree House Guide www.thetreehouseguide.com/
39	Create a new world World Building teenwriting.about.com/library/weekly/aa071602a.htm
40	Set up a lemonade stand Lemonade Stand Game www.coolmath-games.com/lemonade/
41	Learn how to make ethnic food Ethnic Recipes http://www.bhg.com/recipes/food-slide-shows/ethnic-food/
42	Attend a concert Buy tickets http://www.ticketmaster.com/section/concerts
43	Have family game nights What Game Should We Play? http://www.hasbro.com/familygamenight/en_US/
44	Learn about science Latest Science News http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/
45	Make a collage from magazine words and pictures Collage pbskids.org/zoom/activities/do/collage.html
46	Create a terrarium How to Make a Terrarium www.ehow.com/how_9374_make-terrarium.html
47	Learn how to help the environment Environmental Kids Club http://www.epa.gov/kids/index.htm
48	Discover new games to play Nature Games http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activities/nature-games.page-1.html
49	Go to a museum Find a museum in your area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_the_United_States
50	Make a fire plan Home Fire Safety www.usfa.fema.gov/kids/flash.shtm
51	Make up bubble solution and have a contest Casey Carle's "Secret" Bubble Solutions www.bubblemania.com/faq/solution.html
52	Find a pen-pal (parent permission) Pen Pal Directories www.stonesoup.com/main2/penpal.html
53	Plant something Gardens for Beginners www.geocities.com/mastergardener2k/
54	Learn about Plants and our Environment ThinkQuest http://library.thinkquest.org/3715/
55	Host a yard sale How to Plan a Yard Sale www.ehow.com/how_137461_yard-garage-sale.html
56	Build a sandcastle Sandcastle Tools www.sandcastlecentral.com/toolpages/
57	Donate some of the toys and clothes you no longer use How To Donate Toys www.ehow.com/how_10124_donate-toys-children.html
58	Research your family tree Free Genealogy Information http://genealogy.about.com/cs/free_genealogy/a/free_sites.htm
59	Fly a kite Professor Kite and the Secret of Kites www.gombergkites.com/howgen.html
60	Invent your own board game Design Your Own Board Game la.essortment.com/boardgamedesig_rxcu.htm
61	Make your own comic book Comic Creator http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic/
62	Create a book cover for your writing projects Book Cover Creator http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/bookcover/
63	Act in a play So You Want to Put On a Play? www.writewords.org.uk/articles/theatre1.asp
64	Learn to Cook Introductory Cooking Lessons http://www.kids-cooking-activities.com/kids-cooking-lessons-cit-intro.html
65	Make a bird feeder Easy birdfeeders for young children http://www.care2.com/greenliving/make-easy-bird-feeders.html
66	Organize a bike safety clinic Bicycle Safety Command Center www.state.il.us/kids/isp/bikes/
67	Spend time with your grandparents 10 Great Activities www.education-world.com/a_lesson/lesson136.shtml
68	Learn how the Internet works Learn the Net http://www.learnthenet.com/english/section/intbas.html
69	Dig for fossils Dinosaur Dig www.sdnhm.org/kids/fossils/
70	Write a song Notes on Songwriting www.robinfrederick.com/write.html
71	Tie-dye some t-shirts How to Tie-Dye iaia.essortment.com/tiedyedyefa_rmel.htm
72	Make your own banana split Yum! http://parentingteens.about.com/cs/recipesforkids/ht/bananasplit.htm
73	Create a themed dinner Theme Dinner Ideas http://www.kids-cooking-activities.com/theme-dinner-ideas.html
74	Tour the World Google Earth Style http://earth.google.com/tour.html
75	Throw a pajama party Make it a success http://www.ehow.com/how_2047629_plan-pajama-party.html
76	Learn some new outdoor games Games Kids Play www.gameskidsplay.net/
77	Make something from recyclables Crafts from Recycled Products www.makingfriends.com/recycle.htm
78	See a movie with a friend In the theatre or on DVD http://www.movies.com/
79	Make homemade ice cream Kitchen Theater Science in a Scoop www.carnegiemuseums.org/cmag/bk_issue/1996/julaug/dept4.htm
80	Build a time capsule For the entire family http://www.ehow.com/how_6637_make-family-time.html
81	Get a magazine subscription (parent permission) Magazine Listing www.magsonthenet.com/chilmag.html
82	Organize a scavenger hunt Outdoor Scavenger Hunts www.lovetheoutdoors.com/camping/kids/scavengerhunt.htm
83	Go swimming Video Clips of the Swimming Strokes wellness.lattc.cc.ca.us/real/strokes.html
84	Paint a portrait of your best friend Draw Your Friend www.arts.ufl.edu/art/rt_room/sparkers/friend_portrait/ portrait_friend.html
85	Start a collection How to Start a Collection www.ehow.com/how_10563_start-collection.html
86	Write a fairy tale Fractured Fairy Tales http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/fairytales/
87	Travel in time Odyssey Online carlos.emory.edu/ODYSSEY/MidElem_Home.html
88	Stargaze and track the moon phases Moon information http://www.moonconnection.com/
89	Learn how to sew Learn to Sew http://cyberseams.com/
90	Visit a National Park National Park Service Guide www.nps.gov/parks.html
91	Rent a video of a ballet Easy to Read Profiles of the Histories of Ballets classicalmusic.about.com/od/historyofballet/
92	Roast marshmallows How to Roast a Marshmallow www.ehow.com/how_1164_roast-marshmallow.html
93	Watch the birds Tips on Getting Started with Bird Watching www.birdwatching.com/tips/kids_birding.html
94	Arrange a bouquet of flowers Learn how to make a beautiful display http://interiordec.about.com/library/weekly/aa021403b2.htm
95	Learn to blog (parents’ permission) How-to http://learn2blog.pitas.com/
96	Re-decorate your room Decorating Gallery http://www.hgtv.com/topics/bedrooms/index.html
97	Learn to play chess Chess is Fun http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/chess/chess.html
98	Adopt a pet (parent permission) http://www.petfinder.com/
99	Keep your brain going Brain Teasers www.brainconnection.com/teasers/
100	Teach someone to use email How eMail Works www.learnthenet.com/english/html/20how.htm
101	Create your own holiday A Month With No Holidays? Make Up Your Own! .educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson018.shtml

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Bind Your Own Books at Home

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@AVKO.org

Whether you are scrapbooking, self-publishing your child's best-selling work of fiction, doing arts and crafts, or creating a portfolio of writings, there are many reasons why you may want to bind your own book at home. AVKO recommends daily writing; creating a book that contains all of these writings, in chronological order, can easily show the progress that your student has made in writing over the course of a lifetime.

BindingBooksBeautifully.com has ready-to-go packages for you to use to make your own books at home.

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Engaging Language Kit by Brian McCabe Sample on Scribd

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@AVKO.org

Learn more about AVKO's Engaging Language Kits by Brian McCabe. Check out this sample of the various language arts activities that your students will have fun -- and learn -- with below.

381 Sample

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Activities Inspired by Harry Potter

Posted by Brian McCabe, brian@avko.org

Today, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens in theatres everywhere. Regardless of your opinions of the films or books, it's undeniable what they have done to re-instill a love of reading in our nation's kids. In the spirit of Harry Potter, I'd like to propose a few summer activities for reading and language arts:

The Importance of Names:
One of the great things about the Harry Potter series is the ubiquitous presence of names that have some deeper significance or reference: Argus Filch, Minerva McGonagall, etc. See these sites for more information on the names and possible references:

• Harry Potter names
• What's in a Name? - very detailed
• Veritaserum
• Resource Room Word Parts Exercises
  

Challenge your students to pay attention to names in the other books, movies, and pop culture they take in. Names carry a lot of meaning and can be in homage to many things, and can give rich, though subtle, contour to an oeuvre.

Summer Reading Contests:
Summer is traditionally a time for lots of pleasure reading. Challenge your students to read as much as they can over the summer months. You may want to have a reward system for them. Or, you can have them set their own goals. Or, you can contact your local library or school district to see what kinds of competitions they have in place for the students.

Mythology and Personification:
Throughout the Harry Potter series, many mythological creatures and characters are referred to. We have werewolves, giants, vampires, references to Minerva and Argus, etc. How about giving a lesson on the popular myths (Greco-Roman, Norse, Native American, fables, fairy tales) that are pervasive in our culture? Knowledge of these myths is important for the understanding of much classical literature as they are referred to time and time again.

Manytimes, mythological characters are the personified forms of inanimate objects or abstractions (love, war, hearth, wind, fate, etc.) It's interesting to see how different cultures have personified these different abstractions. You can challenge your student to compare various abstractions across different cultures' mythology or even create their own mythological characters personifying an abstraction of their choice. These can make great art projects or creative writing projects. You can also challenge your students to think of a "creation myth" for some object, event, place, etc. This is especially common in the Native American mythologies (e.g., the creation of the Sleeping Bear dunes in Michigan).

• Mythology on Wikipedia - Scroll down to the "Lists" section.
• D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
• More Native American Mythology
  

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Creative Writing Prompts: Ambiguous Stimuli

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@avko.org

Psychologists have, for a long time, used ambiguous stimuli ostensibly to tap into the unconscious mind. By "ambiguous stimuli," we mean something that makes an abstract picture that can be interpreted in many ways. The most famous example of this would be the Rorschach inkblot test. The inkblots do not make up any one picture, but the person "injects" his own creativity, personality, and whatever's the most present on the person's mind into the stimuli to come up with an interpretation of the picture.

See this Wikipedia article for a list of common projective tests.

You can use these same concepts for creative writing prompts. Take an ambiguous stimulus of your own making or observation and have the student(s) write a short story or prose about what they see and can imagine happening in the picture. This activity is really fun to do with a group of students who can share, in turn, what they saw and what they wrote.

Here are some ambiguous stimuli you could use for creative writing prompts:

- Make your own ink blots by putting a smudge of ink or paint on a piece of heavy paper and folding it once or a few times.
- Toss a handful of pebbles, coins, twigs, buttons, etc.
- The clouds -- or a snapshot of a specific cloud.
- Patterns in the sand
- Patterns in the carpeting
- Freckles / scars on your skin
- Random dots on a piece of paper
- Patterns in a television's static.
- Other

Have fun, but try not to over-analyze results, especially if you give instructions to be creative.

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Getting Your Kids Interested in Current Events

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@avko.org

- Make a collage or découpage old maps onto the wall, a table, or a poster board.

See AVKO's previous post on collage or découpage (with words) for information on how to do these crafts.

If your students are surrounded by the images of countries, cities, and cultures -- and learn about them -- they will be more interested in learning more about them in the future. You can find maps in old issues of National Geographic (you can always find back issues at used bookstores, estate sales, antique stores, etc.).

- Take advantage of the news sites for kids and adolescents. Many of them have worksheets you can use for your homeschooling as well.

Check out:

Nick News
Channel One
Scholastic News Online
Time for Kids

- Teach your kids how to read the newspaper

About.com has a nice introduction to newspaper terms that will help in navigating the newspaper for the first time. Explain how there is a difference in perceived importance of the articles based on their placement in the paper. What's on the first page? Are there big pictures? How much space is devoted to the piece?

Explain the difference between news articles, editorials, letters to the editor, and op-eds. Explain bias. You may want to do some high order thinking exercises with your students in helping them parse out what in a piece is biased, how its biased, and what you may be able to infer about the author based on the slant that is taken in a piece.

Use the political cartoons as additional exercises in abstract thought and discussion starters.

- Assign news reviews at least once a week

Have your students write a little recap of a news article at least once a week. You can choose to assign a topic (foreign affairs, politics, op-ed, environment, etc.) or have it be a free for all of what interests them.

- Introduce the Fake News sources, if you wish, to make the news more fun. Obviously, there may be more discretion needed here to decide what is suitable for your individual setting / student. However, political satire and "fake news" programs are extremely popular in today's popular culture. You may decide to take a more intellectual / analytical approach with these and use clips or excerpts as examples of satire, parsing out what is sarcastic (or sardonic), etc.

The Onion
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update
Chocolate News

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Storytelling with your Children

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@avko.org

Younger students love to tell stories, even if it's just sharing what they did that day, what they learned at school, or a silly story they've made up. Take advantage of the children's natural curiosity and creativity -- and boost their language skills -- by writing the stories out.

For younger students, you can have them dictate the stories while you transcribe them. If you have a motor mouth on your hands, you may wish to use a tape recorder or your computer to allow their creative juices to keep flowing naturally (instead of halted waiting for you to finish writing/typing the last sentence). You may need to ask a few questions along the way to get them to elaborate on their descriptions, what happened next, how the characters relate to each other, etc.

Once you have it all written/typed out, put it in a binder. Have your child draw the illustrations and/or the cover. Collect the stories in the same binder or keep them stored together if they are in multiple bindings. A week or so later (and at later intervals, too), you can have the children read the stories back to you or read them silently.

This is a great way for the children to see their own vocabulary words in print, and in the context of full sentences that are syntactically and grammatically correct, reinforcing their language building skills.

They may decide that they want to revise the stories later on -- adding more detail, adding new characters, or creating sequels to the stories. Encourage this!

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Make a Collage...or Découpage with Words

A fun summer activity you can do with your kids is to make a collage or découpage project. To make this education, you can use snippets from old encyclopedia, discarded (and tattered books) from the library, magazines, your own calligraphy or written out words, Word Art for Microsoft Word, or anything else verbal. This can be useful for vocabulary words you are trying to teach, examples of foreign words (a French vocabulary table top, e.g.), words of a certain word family (the -at words, e.g.), or just a hodgepodge of words that sound good to you.

Learn how to découpage at About.com

This can be very versatile if you make multiple word collages to fit the size of your table and then put a sheet of glass overtop of that. Then you could even use a washable marker to write on the glass -- cross of words that were learned (great for goal-oriented learning), write out definitions, or silly comments / messages among family members.

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The Wide World of Words

by Guest Blogger Rebecca Messmann of www.dysingaround.com

Do you ever wonder how to make words come alive for dyslexic kids? It is so hard when the words just seem to float around in space. Well, there is a nifty way to bring them back down to the ground and tether them in some reality for our kids. My family calls it the Wide World of Words and it is so simple to do.

First, buy a cheap photo album. I buy the ones that are about 4”x8”. Check out your local dollar store for one. Next, charge up the digital camera and give it to your child. Join them in a photo tour of your home, your neighborhood and anywhere else you can think of that is “real” to them. Your ideas for photos will need to be a bit dependent on the age of your child but some ideas would be the mailbox, the flowers, the school, the grocery store, and anything and everything along the way to these places. Let them snap those photos till they are blue in the face.

Come back home, pop the disc in the computer and print those photos out. I just print them out on regular paper, not photo paper. You can usually get about four photos (4”x5”) on and 8 1/2”x11” piece of paper. My sons write down the words on another sheet of paper.

When you file the photo and the word in the album do so with the photo on the left hand side and the word on the right hand side (most of the time their eyes will fall naturally to the right hand page first).

Now, when you study sight words (download a free PDF here!) you have something concrete to use with them and it lots of fun to make!

Another idea I am working on with this concept is directions for my oldest son. He will be walking to school alone next year and is scared he will get lost. I am thinking about taking photos of his way to and from school so he can check to see if he is on the right track.

Be creative and let the world of words open to your child so they are not just these random symbols floating around!

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