How To Get Your Child To Love Writing

Writing is one of the most used types of communication, and it’s a skill your child will need in their academic journey. Writing also helps us communicate with other people, connect, and share knowledge with them.

However, teaching your child to love writing can be an extremely challenging task, especially if they view it as schoolwork, or find it difficult in general. Your child may hate writing because they find it “boring”, or because they struggle with a particular skill required to practice writing, such as spelling or grammar.

There are many ways to encourage your child to love writing, and we’re here to help by sharing with you some of our favorites!

Read as much as possible, independently and as a family

Reading and writing go hand in hand, and it’s no secret that children who love reading are also likely to be the best writers. Reading as little as a page everyday can have a huge impact on your child’s writing skills, as reading will encourage your child to develop not only their imagination, but also their critical and analytical thinking skills.

While it might be challenging to convince your child to read daily, this can do wonders for your reluctant writer. Once they find a book they love, they won’t want to stop! Accessing children’s books has never been as easy as it is right now, as children become more familiar with educational technology from a younger age, and ebooks making reading more widely accessible. Reading sparks creativity, and it’s a great gateway to writing, as they can base their work on their favorite books and authors!

Looking for a recommendation? The Night Zookeeper Adventure Book Series is a great collection of action-packed stories to introduce your child to the wonderful world of reading, and to inspire them to give writing a try!

Try using creative writing prompts to spark new ideas

Writing a piece from scratch without guidance can be a very difficult task to accomplish, so why not try some creative writing prompts? Using set prompts is a great way to get your reluctant writer engaged and focused, as they’ll get to choose from a list of suggestions and write about what they’re most passionate about, whether that’s football, their pet, or their favorite subject at school. And if writing prompts aren’t enough to encourage your young learner to love writing, there are even video and picture writing prompts out there to give your child an extra helping hand!

Starting with prompts eases your child into the world of writing by giving them clear ideas on how to get started, while eliminating the pressure linked with coming up with a new story all by themselves. Feeling less pressure to create a story from scratch can have a big impact on your child’s feelings toward writing, and who knows - they may grow to love it!

Draw everything before writing

Drawing is one of the best creative outlets, especially for young children who are preparing to embark on their writing journey. Not only is drawing one of the first activities humans gravitate towards as toddlers, but it’s also one of the most common forms of creative expression for kids.

In the pre-writing stage, drawing can be an extremely beneficial activity to encourage, as it’ll help your child develop fine motor skills needed at a later academic stage (handwriting and typing). Older kids will also benefit from this activity, as it often helps them visualize the settings, characters, and action present in the stories they want to write.

Whether they use crayons, or a chalkboard to brainstorm ideas for their next writing piece, drawing is one of the best ways to encourage your child to love writing!

Make writing a part of your daily life

The importance of writing can often be overlooked, and young children may fail to recognize all of its benefits and uses. With this in mind, try to feature writing in your daily life, particularly when doing things that aren’t directly linked to writing, such as shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Sitting down with your child to write the weekly shopping list, or getting your child to help you fill out your daily planner are great, passive ways to show them how important and useful writing is in daily life.

Being constantly exposed to the benefits of writing, not just in an academic setting, can teach your child to truly appreciate this skill.

Writing doesn’t have to be boring! Try fun writing activities

Writing has been used as an effective form of communication for centuries, and can be considered a “traditional” skill to master, especially in education. Naturally, this means that writing can be taught in a traditional, or as some children deem it, “boring” way in schools. This doesn’t have to be the case! As we learn more about how to keep young learners engaged and focused, it’s no surprise that children love having fun while learning required academic skills.

There are plenty of fun writing activities that you can try to get your child to love writing! From letter tracing (which is a great way to develop fine motor skills), to following story maps, to finding a pen pal, we guarantee you’ll find an activity your child takes to and enjoys.

Use positive feedback as encouragement

It’s easy and completely normal for your child to get discouraged, especially if they’re a particularly reluctant writer, but we’ve seen the impact positive feedback can have on their progress and level of interest. It’s important to always be mindful of how you comment on your child’s work, to ensure that they don’t lose interest in learning this skill.

The aim is to help your child develop self-confidence, and to instil a “can do” attitude in them. If they believe they can write great stories, it serves as motivation for them to keep working on their skills while creating a general interest in the subject. Enough positive feedback may be just what they need to love writing!

Give gamified learning a try

While you may not have heard of gamified learning, it’s become a highly popular way to keep children engaged and focused on developing writing skills. The nature of this teaching method allows children to learn as they play games, and motivates them through competition and clear targets (this varies depending on the game). If your aim is to get your child to love writing, this might be the best approach to getting them interested in developing this skill.

The (usually) small chunks of information make the content shared with your child very digestible and easy to understand. This approach is also a great way to consolidate prior knowledge your child has before moving on to a different topic.

How Night Zookeeper can help

At Night Zookeeper, we’re big fans of gamification, since it allows children to learn through play and encourages them to develop their skills in an enjoyable way. Our award-winning writing program for kids includes thousands of gamified lessons, prompts, challenges, and much more!

Sign up today and get a FREE 7-day trial!

In this article, we provided some new ideas on how you can get your child to love writing, and we encourage you to give them a try! As always, you can reach out to us with any questions via email at support@nightzookeeper, and stay up to date with Night Zookeeper news and new content on our social media pages: