Ideas for Writing at Home (from Ministry of Education)
Write for fun
- Writing about their heroes, sports events, tīpuna (ancestors), hobbies and interests helps your child to stay interested in what they are writing about
- Help your child to leave messages in sand on the beach, send a message in a bottle, do code crackers, word puzzles, crosswords, word finds – these are all fun to do together
- Make up a story or think of a pakiwaitara (legend) and act it out with costumes and music. Write down the names of the characters or tīpuna (ancestors)
- If you or someone in your family has a computer, encourage your child to use it to write, email and publish or print for pleasure (emails, birthday cards, poems, jokes, letters, pictures with captions). Or you could use a computer at the library.
Here's a tip - keep writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.
Talk about your child's writing
- Get your child to talk about their writing and share it
- Cut out words and letters to make stories, codes, poems, puzzles and more…
- Play word games together
- Play with words. Thinking of interesting words and discussing new ones can help increase the words your child uses when they write – look words up in the dictionary or on the Internet or talk with family/whānau to find out more about where the words come from.
Here's a tip - talk about what your child writes. Be interested. If you don’t understand what their story is about, ask them to tell you more about it. Use questions they will want to answer.
Write for a reason
- Get your child to help write the shopping list, invitation lists for family events, menus for special dinners, thank-you cards when someone does something nice
- Postcards are a good size for a sentence or two and they are cheap to post, too. Have a special place to keep your child’s writing at home (notice board, fridge, folder). You might frame a piece of writing and hang it up, too.
Here's a tip - be a great role model. Show your child that you write for all sorts of reasons. Let them see you enjoying writing. Write to them sometimes, too. You can use your first language – this helps your child’s learning, too.