Kids Writing Lesson Plan - Write a Book

by Homeschooling-ideas.com

The focus for this weeks Smorgasbord free homeschool curriculum is to get the children to write a book.

The outcome for the kids writing lesson plan is a finished book - complete with contents, an introduction, pictures and text. The children will also have to design the cover for their book.

Preparation

Decide on the type of book you will make and either collect materials to make and bind it, or download the appropriate software (see below) for a printed version.

Lesson Plan

Day 1 - Decide with the children what type of book will be writen. It could be a story book or a non-fiction book. My children chose to write a book about Ancient Egypt and a Roblox Help Manual! Ideas could be :

A holiday or event the child enjoyed.

A subject the child likes to talk about - how about creating a manual or reference book.

The story of my life.

A storybook or novel - For some inspirations and lesson plans about writing a novel visit the Young Write a Novel in a Month site.

Write a 'first words' book for the language you are studying.

Write a book for a much younger child to teach them something interesting.

Create a gift storybook about a loved one.

We worked out the contents of the book first to give us an outline.

Day 2+3 - Write the contents of the book.
Day 4 - Find (or draw) pictures and add them to your book. Design the cover.
Day 5 - Proof read, make corrections, print and bind.

Further Help

You can either try making homemade books first and then writing in them - or write the book on the computer.

Paper versions : See Making books with children for some bookmaking ideas.

Computer based versions : You could use a word processor (Open Office is free) but if you want to include a lot of pictures you would be better using desktop publishing package - like the free Pageplus software. When finished, you can then print and bind your book.

Professionally published versions : I decided that I wanted to get the childrens books professionally printed - I thought this would be a good incentive to work hard on their books. For the UK the cheapest I could that let us add lots of words (and not just photographs) was WHSmiths at £10 (they do have a smaller version for £6). You need to download the book writing software from the site to write your book in.

For the US Tikatok is an online program in which kids can make a storybook and add illustrations (they can be uploaded). The great thing about this site is that the book can be then be viewed in an interactive way. I think children will really enjoy the professional look of the online books. They do ship internationally.

There are other publishers that do this so do shop around and find a site that gives you the look and price you like.

My children really enjoyed creating their book. Only spending a week on it kept them focused without being overwhelmed.



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