Make Report Writing Easier with this Visual Format

As children learn to write, they are also learning how to tell stories. Often when kids are starting to write stories we encourage drawing a picture and writing about what is shown, whether they are retelling a favorite fairy tale or a story from their most recent vacation.

Pictures can likewise be helpful when early writers seek to give nonfiction reports on something they have learned about. You Clever Monkey has printable report writing templates for sale to use in your studies of bees, butterflies, ants and spiders.

But the same concept can be used for lots of report-style writing, whether you provide the pictures for the student to write about or have them draw something related to what most stuck out to them or interested them about the subject.

This is a great way to get over the “I don’t know what to write about” hurdle and to help kids gain confidence in how to put together simple reports.

[Photo via You Clever Monkey.]

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

Have you read?

Leave a Reply