Story Board

One way that I try to encourage a love for writing, along with reading, is by creating story boards of my daughter's favorite books and movies. 

We read a book or watch a movie and then pull out our large dry erase board.  I ask her "What happened first?"  Most of the time she skips a lot of the beginning and tells me something about the middle of the story (usually where the conflict starts building).  I write down whatever she says word for word.  If her wording is really confusing I will try and help her clarify what she means.  After we have the starting sentence I just keep asking "What happened next?"  I give her some prompts if she needs them and I try and make sure that she is going in order- "Where were they?" and "Did they save her first or did she get in trouble first?"  When we finish the story I always let her illustrate her story in the open space.

This is a fun way to encourage writing and it really helps to teach kids that stories follow a certain order for a reason and that important facts need to be stated.  If the princess never got in trouble then the carebears never have to rescue her so it's important to write down she was in trouble.