78 Ideas for writing across the curriculum in your homeschool

Writing. It’s everywhere! If you’re home right now, let your eyes wander over the room in search of words. What do you notice? A shopping list, perhaps? Mail? Picture books? Birthday cards? Cereal boxes?

Maybe you’re in a coffee shop. Look around and take in the menu, food packages, a stack of magazines, or the community bulletin board.

Breaking Out of the Rut

Even though there are many kinds of writing, we often get in a rut by limiting our children to stories and reports. When I was homeschooling my own kids, I wanted them to have all sorts of writing experiences. Unit studies were perfect for writing across the curriculum.

I still assigned more “traditional” writing, of course. But we also had fun with short, targeted, project-based writing activities that dovetailed writing with other subjects such as science, nature, and history.

These activities took the form of brochures and book jackets, magazines and diaries, obituaries and editorials, charts and posters. Tying our writing—both formal and informal—to our studies made writing practical. It also helped cement concepts and gave the kids many opportunities just to have fun with words.

Benefits of Writing Across the Curriculum 

Explore a topic in greater depth.

These different projects and writing activities encouraged my children to dig deeper. My son, for example, created a newspaper about the Victorian era. He included news articles, advertisements, letters to the editor, human interest stories, and cartoons. Each required different kinds of research, helping him learn more about this time period than a report alone would accomplish.

Appeal to your kids’ interests and learning styles.

I don’t have to tell you that children learn differently.

• The kinesthetic child learns better when he can build, work with textures, or use various media.
• The auditory learner might like writing and performing songs, poems, speeches, or plays.
• Projects that include art, photography, or computer-related activities appeal to the visual child.

Children absorb information through their senses. The more ways a child handles information, the better he retains it. When assigning writing, it’s wise to offer lots of choices that develop well-rounded writers. Project-based writing gives all students the chance to write in the ways they learn best.

Make writing more fun.

Don’t get me wrong: reports are important. But I bet your child will be less resistant if, from time to time, he gets to write an advertisement, create a trivia game, or make a brochure about Pompeii or Ancient Egypt or Lewis and Clark’s expedition. Activities like these help him see that writing can be fun!

Ideas for Writing Across the Curriculum

Journals, book reviews, glossaries, and recipes can all find a place in your homeschool writing diet. Explore this list of 78 writing genres. Many don’t require much planning, so pluck out a few ideas and try them this very week!

1. Advertisements
2. Alphabet book
3. Animal stories (fiction or nonfiction)
4. Autobiographies
5. Banners
6. Blogs
7. Biographies
8. Book jackets
9. Brochures
10. Bumper stickers
11. Business cards
12. Cartoons
13. Catalogs
14. Comics
15. Coupons
16. Day in the life
17. Descriptive writing
18. Dialog
19. Diaries
20. Dictionaries and glossaries
21. Displays
22. Editorials
23. Expository or informative writing
24. Fact sheets
25. Flyers
26. Food packages
27. Games (board games, trivia games, vocabulary games)
28. Greeting cards
29. Guidebook
30. Handbook
31. Headlines
32. How-to articles
33. Index
34. Instruction manuals
35. Interviews
36. Journals
37. Lab reports
38. Lapbooks
39. Letters (friendly letters, business letters, complaints, requests, thank-you notes)
40. Lists
41. Magazines
42. Maps
43. Math word problems or math poems
44. Menus
45. Narratives
46. Newsletters
47. Newspapers
48. Obituaries
49. Observations
50. Opinions
51. Outlines
52. Petitions
53. Photo essays
54. Picture books
55. Plays
56. Poetry
57. Postcards
58. Posters
59. PowerPoint presentations
60. Proverbs and sayings
61. Questionnaires
62. Quizzes or test questions
63. Recipes
64. Responses to literature
65. Reviews
66. Rules
67. Scrapbooks
68. Signs
69. Slogans
70. Songs
71. Speeches
72. Sports articles
73. Stories
74. Summaries
75. Surveys
76. Timelines
77. Twitter tweets
78. Want ads

Which of these sound like fun to you? Where will you start?

Photos: Seier+Seier (texture), Jimmie (lapbook), courtesy of Creative Commons