Summertime! The key word here is “enjoy.” Enjoy these fun and thought-provoking prompts and writing ideas. Enjoy their summery-ness. And enjoy that your 5th – 12th graders are writing but you are not grading!

There are six prompts and prompt bundles waiting for your children and one article for you.

Ready? Let’s go . . .

1. Campfire or TV?

Gathering around the campfire is a different experience than getting together to watch a movie. However, they have their similarities. Use this summer prompt to stretch those compare-and-contrast muscles.

2. Your Job in the Circus

Most likely, you could compare your own life to a circus act of some sort. Or perhaps you could identify a job in the circus that closely mirrors your life.

Are you the unicyclist, wheeling through life with fewer resources than you would like? Or a juggler with too many things up in the air?

Click here to join the circus. >>

3. Write a Resume

Are you thinking of looking for a job? Does the idea of writing a resume give you the twitches?

Learn skills from this important job applicant and then try it yourself.

4. Travel Prompts

Are you a homebody, or do you love to gallivant? To gallivant is to travel, wander, or globetrot. Does that sound like you?

Whatever you happen to be, you can use these 16 writing prompts to become an armchair traveler and see the world right from where you are. You might even be inspired to plan a real-life trip!

5. Snowflakes in Summer?

Hot, sweaty, summer days are filled with things you can’t do other times of the year, things like going on a beach vacation, weeding and harvesting, canning, swimming outdoors, catching fireflies, going camping, spending time with friends, and so on.

So perhaps it makes no logical sense that this prompts is really about winter. >>

6. Birches

Have you ever come across something unusual and wondered how it got that way?

Robert Frost in his poem “Birches” does just that. He finds some birches in the woods that are bent down and wonders what happened to make them curve down. Did a boy come by and climb them, bending them down? Did an ice storm overwhelm the branches?

Find out by exploring “Birches” here. >>

7. Summertime Ideas for Writing and Literature

Since many of us are deep into vacations, cook-outs, swimming, gardening, swatting mosquitoes, and avoiding school, we need weightless ideas for writing and literature that are fun and don’t take a lot of energy.

These are practical and not a bit corny! >>

Yours for more vibrant writing and literature experiences,