Inspire Me! Story Starter Photo Cards ~ Summer Fun Theme

Sometimes young writers have a hard time putting their thoughts on paper. When I used to teach Kindergarten, writing was actually my favorite subject to teach, but many children struggled with it. In my homeschool, my boys have struggled the most with being free writers. My daughter is much more willing to write and I am trying to find unique ways to encourage and inspire her to just have fun with writing. I have been brainstorming for awhile; trying to come up with a consistent, fun, and engaging way to have her writing for fun on a regular basis.

I love photographs and using them in teaching. Many of our printables feature real photographs in place of cute clipart. The idea of using a simple photo to inspire thought for free writing is where my brainstorm ended up. I decided to create a series of printable story starter cards featuring photographs based around a theme. Inspire Me! is the name I landed on.

Each set features a simple photograph on the front, with word ideas on the back. The word ideas were added as a way to give young writers confidence with a few key words spelled correctly right there for them to refer to. Often children feel lost and dislike not being able to spell. For my boys especially, this would cause them to freeze. The word ideas are to help that type of child, the one who loses all ideas, mostly due to their fear of not writing correctly.

For our first set, I chose a summer theme since it is HOT where we are!

See a video walk through here showing you our cards and the extra printables we use alongside of them.

Below you can see some action shots of my daughter using these. She chooses a card from the set, chooses her writing paper {I allow her to choose if she feels like drawing that day or not}, grabs her Try-It Sheet, and starts writing. Right now she is only writing one sentence but this will increase as we move along.