DIY Homeschooler

It’s summer. While keeping things light, you do want your children to keep those skills sharp (math and writing come to mind here). Try using a random word generator to keep your children writing every day!

Start easy. Use an online random word generator to create a list of words that will inspire your child to write (or orally narrate) a story. Many of these allow you to determine beforehand the max number of letters in each word or the number of syllables, making it easy to adjust the activity for your child’s reading/writing level.

Should you end up with a word or two that are unfamiliar to your child, you can use the opportunity to learn new words, or simply switch them out by pressing the button again.

Once you have your list of words, your child can create a story. The story can be a couple of sentences to several paragraphs long depending on his age and interest.

This activity lends itself well to an infinite number of variations. Below are a few suggestions.

Suggestions

• Keep a notebook. One tool that makes writing something every day easy and effective is the writing notebook. There is something about having a 3-inch binder bursting at the seams at the end of the year full of treasures to be revisited often that inspires a writer! You’ll want to set your child up with one that he can add his daily creations to. It is another way to document the summer fun!
• For an older student, you can add a combination of nouns, verbs, and adjectives to make the activity a bit more challenging.
• Read the creations aloud. Besides providing another incentive to write something interesting, it can also be fun entertainment for the entire family.
• Illustrate the story. Use drawing and writing paper to illustrate the writing. For an extra challenge add the random words to the illustration in a creative way.
• Create the random words beforehand, print them on separate slips of paper, put them in a jar, and have each child pull out his writing assignment.
• Make it a treasure or scavenger hunt. You can put the words in plastic eggs or just hide them around the house, yard, or other location. Then let your children search for their words until they have a specified number. Then start writing.
• Write like your favorite author. What is your child’s current favorite book or story? Have him follow a familiar story line using his random words to change things up a bit and come up with his own creation.
• Create a Mad Lib beforehand (see resources below). Then the words can be used to create the pre-made story.

Example

For our example, we will use words generated from RandomWordGenerator.com:

1. insist
2. eagle
3. collapse
4. present
5. garage

Sentence: I really must insist that you collapse the Eagle and store it in the garage until we are able to present it to your father as a present.

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Additional Resources

Random Word Generator
Select the number of words, and word size or syllable size. If you want to try an alliterative or rhyming piece, you can also determine the first and/or last letters. Other options are available for generating random nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more.

Random Word Generator
Another option that is great for older students.

Random Word Generator
This one allows you to select your words from the random outputs.

Mad Lib Generator
Pull a passage from your child’s favorite book, then generate a mad lib and insert his random words.

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