My first grade teacher, Miss Mary Bodi, spent a lot of time bringing out the writer in  her students. Regularly throughout the year, she asked us to choose a picture from a file. In it were magazine advertisements, clipped comics, and other images she’d collected.

One-by-one, were called to sit next to her at a table where we dictated a story that we thought the image depicted. She wrote the story down in a teacher’s perfect script, then at a later time, typed the short-short  stories and gave them back to us to paste onto jumbo pieces of construction paper.

We also wrote a caption or story to accompany every art project we did in the class, whether it was a handprint on a page,  the tissue-paper fall scene, or the cotton-ball snowman.  After each field trip, we drew a picture and wrote a memory. 

At the end of the year, we were rewarded with a two-inch thick book of our writing and illustrations. The book, though a little ragged and word at the edges, is a great grade-school memory. I’m so glad to have this evidence of early literacy that helped shape me as a young writer.

I’ve worked on a variation of this with my two older kids, though I’ve not yet bound them in book form.
The benefits: 

  • Using images gives writers a starting point, which eliminates writer’s block. This is especially useful if you have a child who insists they “have nothing to write about.”
  • Asking a writer to articulate visuals sets their analytical skills in motion. Like muscles, the more you strain them, the stronger they become.  Analysis is the crux of critical thinking, which the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Interpreting images and communicating those interpretations is a stepping stone for analyzing ideas in the news and in our reading.  It is critical to active democratic citizenship.

You don’t have to carry this exercise to the publication stage—your children young and younger can still benefit from writing their own captions or short stories to accompany images that you clip from magazines,the funny pages,  or download and print from Google Images. The act of articulating an explanation and narrative to describe a scene can help your child develop story-telling, skills, and nurture creativity and imagination.

An alternative to clipping and writing that is especially beneficial to toddlers and preschoolers who may not be so eager to see their words in print, is to use scenes from picture books. Just flip to an illstration and ask your child what they think is happening. They are not only writing a scene, but exercising their pre-reading skills.

Miss Bodi made this a year-long project. With a limited scope, it is more likely that you would bind the work as a book. Some suggestions: Make this a holiday break or Summer break project.