A gaggle of neighborhood kiddies descended on our house a few weeks ago and wrote the first installment of our new - monthly - summer - neighborhood newspaper.
This project first emerged early in the spring when the kids came up with the idea themselves and wrote out a four page piece which included comics and recipes. This summer, I helped formalize their idea with custom templates and a publishing budget of 3 copies per family.
The first summer edition totaled nineteen pages and included comics, recipes, jokes, poems, songs, a story about the neighborhood community garden and a reminder of bike safety. The pride in my 5 year-olds face as he passed out his copies to the neighbors of his choice was fabulous.
As a more formal project, I would have children look at local newspapers to get a feel for the style and content, and then have students use the writing process to refine their own articles; but as an at-home activity we just used this as an occasion for fun. First drafts were ‘good enough.’ We celebrated the effort; not the grammar or spelling. As every family is able to decide how to distribute their own copies, we chose to have kids sign their work by initials only and to split the costs, each family will take turns paying for copy charges over the duration of the project.
I’ve posted the templates here in case your young journalists want to give it a try. Happy Writing!
This project first emerged early in the spring when the kids came up with the idea themselves and wrote out a four page piece which included comics and recipes. This summer, I helped formalize their idea with custom templates and a publishing budget of 3 copies per family.
The first summer edition totaled nineteen pages and included comics, recipes, jokes, poems, songs, a story about the neighborhood community garden and a reminder of bike safety. The pride in my 5 year-olds face as he passed out his copies to the neighbors of his choice was fabulous.
As a more formal project, I would have children look at local newspapers to get a feel for the style and content, and then have students use the writing process to refine their own articles; but as an at-home activity we just used this as an occasion for fun. First drafts were ‘good enough.’ We celebrated the effort; not the grammar or spelling. As every family is able to decide how to distribute their own copies, we chose to have kids sign their work by initials only and to split the costs, each family will take turns paying for copy charges over the duration of the project.
I’ve posted the templates here in case your young journalists want to give it a try. Happy Writing!
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