Handwriting Activities: Linking Memory Story Writing

This activity was something we started doing recently for a number of reasons:

• handwriting practice
• exercise creativity
• screen-free activity

Daddy is very particular about Aristotle’s handwriting, but the thing about handwriting, unfortunately, is that you have to practice to get better at it. The problem with practicing handwriting is that Aristotle finds it boring. I can’t say I blame him. I never did enjoy writing rows and rows of alphabets just for the sake of getting the shape correct.

In order to avoid the boredom, we have been encouraged to get him to write about subjects rather than doing the monotonous letter writing practice. Recently, I took the deck of story cards by Smart Toys to help him come up with a writing subject. I shuffle the deck and lay out a series of cards for him and ask him to write a detailed linking memory story from them. Instead of the usual linking memory story, we try to come up with something more creative.

For example:

If the words are:

• cat
• ball
• museum

A simple linking memory story might be: a cat bounced on a ball all the way to the museum.

A detailed linking memory story, on the other hand, would go something like: a silly, colourful cat was walking down the street when it’s tail was bumped by a ball. The ball bounced all the way down to the museum across town where they were having an ice cream exhibition.

Or something like that. The idea is to come up with a wacky story – the wackier and crazier, the better.

The extension after this would be to draw a picture to accompany the story.

More about Linking Memory:

• Right Brain Home Practice – Linking Memory
• Linking Memory Flash Cards