Howywood Kindergarten: Joyful Journaling!

Hey! I think it's so important for kindergarteners (and all kids!) to be writing everyday! The last few years I let them write about whatever they wanted in their journals, but this year I tried giving them little prompts a few days a week and they love it! They STILL get to write about anything they want on "Free Choice Fridays!" and also in the Daily 5 writing journal, but it's been cool to read their responses to different questions in their journals. I love the way it's transforming their journals into little scrapbooks or time capsules-- tiny Kindergarten scribblings about who they love, what they've been up to, all their favorite stuff and more! Parents (and kids!) are going to LOVE looking back on all this!

So each day over lunch I was quickly typing up a little prompt... or sometimes I'd get ambitious and do a few day's worth to be EXTRA prepared -ha! I kept a few in my emergency sub plan notebook, but I was mostly living day to day or week to week.... until... FINALLY last weekend I took the time to write up enough prompts for an entire year! Oh yea! Over 100 different prompts! We do "what did you do over the weekend?" almost very Monday and Fridays are "Free Choice Fridays!" But then the other 100-ish prompts can fill in all the Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays of our school year! I made 30 copies of each individual prompt all in one document (10 prompts on a page = 327 pages or so!)... so that all I had to do was press PRINT ONE TIME this year and wah-la! I'm DONE and ready for the entire school year!! No more copies needing to be made or trips run to the printer.. everything is all right there. SO exciting to be so prepared and organized!!

If you like to give your kids writing prompts from time to time, you might find this handy, too! It could save you tons of time and it's all available at my TpT store! Since it's brand spankin new, I'm offering it at a nice discount so get it while it's hot! :) Ha!

Prompts are organized by similar topics and you can jump around in them however you'd like:

* "A few of my favorite things" (like "What is your favorite thing to do with your family?")

* "What did you do over the weekend?" (or break)

* "Write about a time when..." (like "Write about a time when you were sick." Ick, I know, but kids LOVE writing about that! Ha!)

* "That special someone" (like "Write about the youngest person you know.")

* "Wishes" (like "What do you want to be when you grow up?")

* "Lists" (like "List two things you could do to help someone today!")

* "Why?". (like "Why is it important to brush your teeth?")

Wanna see how it looks all set up?

So I just printed it up, three hole punched the pages, and popped them all in a three ring binder.

I know I'll use "What did you do over the weekend?" every Monday so I popped a bunch of those in a baggie in the front pocket (along with a few others I'm planning to use this week, all paper clipped and ready to roll).

Then just pick any prompt you want to use on a given day, rip out the pages with that prompt (each prompt is 3 pages total - 10 prompts on a page so you'll end up with 30 little strips of paper) and take a few seconds to snip them apart. Easy-cheesy.

Lay them out for the kids to grab (journaling could make GREAT morning work to do as they come in to class?) or I often like to stick the prompts in my pocket and dramatically whip them out as I reveal today's idea and get them all excited to write!