Kids who use newsletters to practice writing skills often continue to write as adults.
Children's newsletters provide opportunities to practice writing, editing and graphic design skills while staying in touch with friends, relatives, classmates and community members. It is a bridge between hobby writing and professional journalism or publishing. Children who write early and often usually continue to write into adulthood. Skills acquired while writing children's newsletters are vital to later careers. Email messages, blog entries, fund requests, quality assurance reports and employee evaluations can all affect a company's bottom line.
Round Robin
A round robin newsletter starts as a note from one family member or friend to another. The child reporter chooses a writing prompt or asks a question, asks and answers it, and passes the newsletter to the next person in the chain. That person adds his or her thoughts, uses the writing prompt or poses another question.This continues until everyone in the chain adds their input. You can use illustrator and creative writing teacher Bruce Van Patten's interactive tool, the "Random Wacky Headline Maker," to help you choose a topic.
The chain is complete when the newsletter returns to the child reporter, who then takes all the information in the round robin and uses it to select topics for feature stories. The answers to each question become quotes to use in the features. This method works best when the child reporter poses a question that relates to an annual or seasonal theme. It also works best when the members of the chain are selected for their varied ages, interests and outlooks.
Inspiration and Uplift
Kids can explore faith and motivation by creating an inspirational, devotional or motivational newsletter. Choose graphics that reflect uplifting and positive themes. Create filler copy with encouraging slogans and inspiring images. Focus on whatever is right, good and beautiful. Although this can sometimes appear to be a "rose-colored glasses" approach, inspirational newsletters provide a refreshing break from the cares and concerns of the day, helping the reader reset his emotional and spiritual energies.
Inspirational newsletter graphics might include photos or images of religious or motivational historical figures, starbursts, rainbows, hearts, hot air balloons, waterfalls, rivers and streams, flowers and any other graphic that might cause a person to stop and contemplate for a few minutes.
Promote a Cause
You can create a cause-based newsletter such as "Kids for Turtles." Kids for Turtles was designed to increase awareness of the need for wildlife protection and reduce "nature deficit disorder" in children and adults, states its parent agency, Long Point World Biosphere Reserve. Causes can include constructing, improving or maintaining local bicycle and walking trails, establishing community gardens and compost stations, protecting green spaces, recycling, healthy school lunches, making quilts or stuffed toys for aid organizations, animal rescue, petitioning for the creation of a skate park, or any other community-building activity you choose to promote.
To create stories for your cause-based newsletter, use a writing prompt. Milli Thornton, author of "Fear of Writing," suggests imagining yourself as a cockroach sympathizer, speaking at an animal rights rally. Write all the reasons why cockroaches should be protected. Once the story is written, substitute any other animal or cause, research the necessary details and publish your findings.
