I'm going to prepare a writing caddy with paper, pens, pencils, colored pencils, pencil sharpener, card stock strips, etc. I've ordered a book called "Rip the Page: Adventures in Creative Writing" by Karen Benke. It has fun writing prompts and ideas, lists to make, snippets from poems and authors--lots of good stuff to get the creative juices flowing.
Another book I'd like to check out is "The Write Start: A Guide to Nurturing Writing at Every Stage, from Scribbling to Forming Letters and Writing Stories."
When I taught sixth grade (the one year I taught), we did a lot of creative writing, and my favorite writing prompt was called spill-a-story. I collected small objects and put an assortment of them in little containers with lids. I would give a container to each student and they would spill the contents onto their desk and write a story involving the objects. The objects can be anything: a penny, a plastic trinket, a fuzzy pom-pom, dice, a playing card, a ticket stub, an action figure, a sticker, a spool, etc. I plan to make some spill-a-story containers for Knox to rev his writing engine. It's fun!
I want to sit down and do some writing exercises with him. I'm starting today with a little poem about a lady who didn't write her thank you notes (it just so happens that I know her very well, ahem):
She swirled through the rapidly moving stream
Calling out her thank yous to the figures along the riverbank
Who never heard them above the roar of rushing waters.
She left stranded thank yous in her wake, caught in the
Eddies and currents, bobbling unreceived and unknown.
The figures and their kindnesses blurred into green and gray
As she was swept along further and further from them.
