WFMW: Picture Story Starters for Creative Writing

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I think one of the hardest things to teach my boys has been the writing process.

A simple sentence...not so much.  But teaching the whole process of writing to them has never been, and probably never will be, a strength of mine.

I am a science teacher, majoring in Biology in college.  I am pretty good at math.  Spelling has always come easy to me also.

But, writing...let someone else take care of teaching that....please!  :)

Yesterday, I was thrilled to have one of those, "Yes, this will finally work!" moments.   You see, over the many years I have homeschooled my boys (the older two are in public school now), I have tried several different methods for teaching writing.  Writing is just something I "do"...how in the world do you explain "how" to a little boy???

We read a lot of books aloud.  They read a lot of books to themselves.  Shouldn't they just "get it?"  Well, evidently not.....lol!

After trying several different curriculums...I never found one I loved.
Many other homeschoolers have spoken so highly of "Writing Strands", and others, but again, I just never really loved any of them.

Back to my story from yesterday...  My son asked me to check the lesson he had just finished his grammar workbook (Rod & Staff English 3).  I looked at his page and was shocked to see a ton of writing...not just words, but sentences....and more than just one or 2!  :)  I looked closer and saw the lesson was to create a short story from the pictures shown.  It gave a couple of questions he could answer in the story, if he chose to do so, but he said he didn't need that help!  Haha!

So, two pictures...two tiny little stories!

Needless to say, I was THRILLED!!!

The stories were not perfect.  There were some run-on sentences, and some spelling errors, to name a few...but it is a start!!  Now I have something to work with (I know I shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition)!  :)  Yay!

So, what will work for this mother/son--teacher/student duo, will be "picture story starters."  The possibilities are endless.  I have already found some great websites that offer such a thing, including:
Young Writers Workshop
Scholastic Story Starters--online tool
Picture Prompt Story Starters

I also plan on looking through magazines for fun pictures to cut out and use.

He can write his story, and we can edit it from there.

The final copy will include the picture, and will go into a folder of his creative writing.

Yahooooooooooo!!!!

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