This idea comes from Jennifer at The Write Start: To support her child’s learning at home, she created a “Writer’s Workshop” in a corner of her home. She used an old chicken coop, but you could use anything with little cubbyholes or shelves. By gathering together all sorts of materials that can be used for writing or learning about letters in one spot, and giving it the lofty title “Writer’s Workshop”, Jennifer was able to make writing really appealing to her son. She has baskets full of alphabet stamps, paper cut to different sizes, small pencils, little chalk boards, and a laminated alphabet card for reference.
She also has a really cool tool for learning about letter shapes that you may not have seen before: They are wood pieces for capital letters from Handwriting Without Tears. Children can use the curved and straight shapes to make letters, and I imagine they could be used for tracing on big paper as well.
If a child is not that interested in writing with pencils, there are two things that I usually offer instead: 1) an old typewriter, and 2) really long (like 3 feet long) strips of paper to write on using black paint and a nice little brush. Sometimes, just changing the medium is enough to make writing suddenly appealing!
Of course it won’t always look as neat as this – but when there is a little nook for each thing, clean up is much easier. If you liked this idea, I highly recommend checking out Jennifer’s blog, The Write Start.
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