Teen Programming - Creative Writing

In today's Teen Home School Group, we did a fun little creative writing activity inspired by an In Our Write Minds blog post on Writing Warm-Ups. The idea is that each person receives a sheet of paper with a five-word phrase on it:

Five Word Phrase Prompts (you can make your own, too!):

• Once upon a time there . . .
• The mystery began when the . . .
• In a kingdom far away . . .
• Once, long ago, a tiny . . .
• Last week, while digging in . . .
• Today was far from normal! 

Then each teen would write another five-word phrase, then pass it on to the next teen, who would write a five-word phrase and so on and so on. There were ten of us (including myself), and we passed the papers around so that each paper would go around the circle twice, and the person who started the paper would also finish it (so they would write on their paper three times, while only writing twice on everyone elses). This, oddly enough, took up the full hour of our program, leaving just enough time to read the completed stories at the end. Here is one example:

Once, long ago, a tiny light appeared in the sky. Only one person saw it. She was Majesty, a princess. She loved to dance to rock music in pajamas while eating purple pancakes. She was a weird person, she said and then she said, "I love to eat pickles and I love to read." The light saw Majesty and decided to visit her. It shot from the sky and bolted down to greet her. It gave her a present; it was a donkey who could slow down time! He made it 1975 and then 2050 in New York City. He polished his favorite shoes. He wore them out that night. The light and Majesty traveled to forever and were happy there. The End.

All the stories were equally wackadoodle, but I can't help but be pleased that mine had a touch of the timey wimey! My Whovian reading of this makes the Light the Doctor, the Donkey the TARDIS, and the Princess the Companion.

I'd like to travel to forever with the Doctor.

This was a really fun program and extremely easy to do. I grabbed some printer paper, some clip boards, and a pile of pens, and off we went! Easy peasy, lemon squeezey!