This set of free writing prompts for kids is an excerpt from the new book 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade. If you enjoy the preview, feel free to buy the full book!
Let’s face it, this is really the best age group in which to cultivate imagination. Later on, a lot of kids become teens who think imagination is stupid and they focus on television and the Internet to come up with all the creativity. This is the best time to build the imagination up as large as possible so that your kids don’t grow up to be crusty, boring adults :). These prompts focus on that imagination and utilizing it to create some fun stories and ideas.
Writing Prompts for Kids #2: A New World
1. You have become the King or Queen of the entire world! How do you plan on changing things with your newfound power? How would everything change in your home town and in the rest of the world?
2. All of a sudden, everybody in the world has the power to fly just like a superhero! Obviously, this changes the way you’re going to get to school, but how does it change the other things in your life? Are you a particularly good flier?
3. One day, you wake up to find that you have gone 10 years in the future and that you’re 10 years older. What is life like in high school or college? Who are your friends? How has the world changed in a decade?
4. Upon returning home, your parents give you the fantastic news that they have won the lottery, which means that they have won over a million dollars! How does your life change with all of that money? Do you move into a bigger house and have better toys and games? Go into extreme detail.
5. As you go to feed your pet snake, he begins talking to you in English or some other language you understand. You begin to notice that all animals have started talking to you. What do they say? Do they ask you for anything? How do you use this new ability to change your life for the better?
6. World peace has been declared and as a result all fighting between countries has stopped for good! Now that nobody needs to go to war anymore, what are some of the things that the countries should focus on? Stopping world hunger? Curing all diseases? Without fighting, how will the world change?
7. On a bright and sunny Friday morning, an alien spacecraft lands in your backyard. All of the news vans in the city come to your house as the aliens come out to greet you and your family. What happens next?
8. A package arrives at your house addressed to you. You open it to find that it is an autobiography written by a version of you from the future. Not only does it say everything that’s ever happened to you, but it details the next 30 years of your life! What do you do? Do you read it? Do you ignore it? How does your life change after getting this package?
9. After a big flood of the polar ice caps, your town has become … a water town! Everybody takes boats everywhere and has to learn to swim really well. How else does your life change in this new water world?
10. You have become the most popular kid at school. How did it happen? How has your life changed since your popularity went through the roof?
Notes: One of the awesome things about writing prompts for kids is that you could give kids the same prompt several times a year and they would have almost completely different responses. Try that out with a prompt that seems to get fantastic stories out of your kids and get 50 assignments out of these 10 little story starters.