Homeschooling Ideas: Nature Writing with your Children
This piece as very much been written with your children in mind. No matter where you live, using nature as your creative ally is possible. Whether it’s going for a walk in your local green space or just opening a window to hear the birds, telling stories about the cloud overhead or watching the sky change colour at sunrise or sunset, the natural world offers us more than a number of ways to enrich and enhance your children’s writing. Let them explore what they see, hear, feel (etc) with their own words and support them in developing their confidence in how they express their ideas. Try not to worry about punctuation or spelling: exploration (and fun!) is key.
Do let me know if you use this in your homeschooling - lockdown or otherwise - I’d love to read your words.
Happy writing!
Helen x
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If you love writing stories about magical places and intriguing characters, the natural world is an amazing place to find inspiration when you’re feeling short of ideas. Next time you’re out and about, why not use these ideas to get your started on some new stories?
The Five Senses: What can you see, smell, hear? What are the shapes, colours and textures of the leaves, the plants and the trees and how do they feel when you touch them? How would you describe them? What could they double up as? For example, could a leaf be a fairy umbrella? Or maybe the roots of the trees could be a playground for a ladybird?
Seasons: What season is it? How do you know? How does this season make you feel? What characters could you create that would enjoy this season? For example, maybe you could tell the story of a hedgehog coming out of hibernation in the Spring and how it might feel when it takes its first gulp of fresh, spring air, or the flight of the Swallow returning to the UK for the Summer.
Get close-up: Find an interesting flower or tree and get really close to it (be careful of bees if it’s the summer!). What do you notice when you look at it this close? Are there any colours or shapes you didn’t see before? What does it smell like? Can you think of any interesting ways of describing it, for example, how would you describe it to an alien who can’t see it?
Top Tips
When you first start writing, don’t think about spelling or punctuation, just get your amazing ideas down on the page and do the rest later!
Use adjectives. Describing words help you to bring your writing to life for your reader. Using a thesaurus can also help to bring more adventurous words into your stories!
Create a beginning, middle and end. If you’re writing a full story, imagine that you’re taking your reader on a journey: where does this ‘journey’ begin? What happens in the middle? Are there any twists or turns on this adventure and do your characters get lost along the way? How to find their way out and what happens at the end of that helps them to get ‘home’ again?
Be brave and experiment with different forms you haven’t tried before! Why not write a poem or a song about badgers, an imaginative and inventive newspaper article about the cheeky forest folk or maybe even a fifty-word story about the journey of a falling leaf?
