This is a story written by my 10 year old daughter Sarah as part of an assignment I gave her and her younger sister two days ago. Her items for part 1 of the assignment were:

• Living Room: Lamp and Myself
• Kitchen: Mom and Microwave
• Bedroom 1: Lampshade and Marisol
• Bedroom 2: Light and Me
• Bedroom 3: Lamb and Mickey Mouse
• Bedroom 4: Legal Pads and Mirror
• Bathroom: Lightbulbs and Light Switch

Here is her story, reprinted exactly as originally written, entitled An English Adventure…

It was a snowy winter day in England. Genevieve, Anneliese and Sarah were playing with Sarah’s new lampshade. Well, probably not Sarah. She was just trying to get it back. Genevieve and Anneliese were putting it on Genevieve’s lamb toy as a ballet skirt, and Anneliese’s dool Marisol, as a cone, like one of those flea or cut cones. I mean, not that, that makes as much sense as lightbulbs being cooked in a microwave. Well, they put it around Marisol’s neck upside down. Sarah grabbed it and called their mom. “Mother! Genny and Annie were messing with my lampshade!” “Girls!” called mom. That was all she said but everybody knew what it meant. Me, I don’t know, myself. But everyone in the McCormick household knew. Now, back to the story. After mom said that, Sarah felt herself slipping away into darkness. in the darkness she heard a faint ‘Sarah! Sarah!’ Then she saw a light, the the one from the lamp in the family room. Then she saw someone who looked like they had Mickey ears. The person looked an awful lot like Genevieve. In fact, it was Genevieve. “GENNY! What happened to your ears?!” Genevieve replied “What, these? They’ve always been like that!” “They have?” said Sarah. She made a note of that in her legal pads. She looked in the mirror, and she has a lightswitch for her nose! And she didn’t have a mouth, either! She felt herself suffocating. Then, all of a sudden, she woke up with her face in her pillow! It was all a drea,! Anneliese saw her face and said “Boy, Sarah! What happened to you?” And Sarah said, “Phew! It was all a dream. Just a dream! I LOVE YA, FOLKS!”

the end

P.S. It was still winter in England.

This is a story written by my nine year old daughter Rebekah as part of an assignment I gave her and her older sister yesterday. Her items for part 1 of the assignment were:

• Living Room: Lamp and Music
• Kitchen: Light and Microwave
• Bedroom 1: Lite Brite and Money
• Bedroom 2: Lion and Minnie Mouse
• Bedroom 3: Lamb and Mickey Mouse
• Bedroom 4: Laptop and Mirror

Here is her story, reprinted exactly as originally written, entitled A Beautiful Snowday in Asia…

Once, there was a girl named Lina. She lived in China. She had a friend named Rayla. They were playing outside. “I wish it would snow.. After all, it is winter.” said Lina. “We haven’t had any snow for, um, let’s see, 50 years. My grandma told me.” said Rayla. “No chance of it this year.” “Well”, said Lina, “it is possible.” “That’s silly.”, said Rayla. “Let’s go get some lunch.” “Fine.” said Lina. But she was still thinking about snow. After they had lunch, they went for a walk. “Still, I wish it would snow.” So they went home for dinner. After dinner, bedtime. The next day, they met each other at the pond. “We’ll eat lunch at our meeting spot.” said Lina. But when they got to the pond it was frozen. “That’s funny”. Pretty soon, it started to snow! “Let’s have wonton soup for lunch” said Lina. So they invited there friend Rebekah over for lunch. Lina heated her soup in a pot. Rebekah heated heres in a thing called a microwave. “How do you use it” asked Lina. “Well” Rebekah began. But Lina’s mom interrupted her. “Girls” she said. “Eat.” So she told about it over soup. “There are buttons that you push. You put food in the microwave & for minutes you do 2 zeros & for seconds, you do 1.” “Let’s go play outside in the snow!” said Lina. So they spent the rest of the day playing in the snow.
THE END

So I gave my two older kids a task last night. It was a simple task, but not one that should be easily completed. It had two parts and went something like this…

Part 1:
Go in to each room of the house (at your option, the bathrooms) and find one or two things in each room that start with the letter “L” or the letter “M” (you can use any two letters that you want). Write these items down on a piece of paper.

Part 2:
Using the items on the list you just created, write a story. The story must meet the following criteria:

• Use all of the items on the list
• Contain three characters: yourself and two others whose names cannot be found anywhere in the house
• Take place in a county other than the USA
• Take place in winter
• One character must have possession of at least one thing from the list

So my kids got busy. And you know what? They are pretty creative. I will post their stories tomorrow and the following day to show how creative kids can be.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they had only 30 minutes to complete the story and they could not write down the instructions. I figured I’d like to see how they handle the pressure of an instruction list and a deadline. Anyway, wait until tomorrow to see what a 10 year old and a nine year old can come up with given these instructions.