Kindergarten Writing Crafts That Motivate Students

Motivating young kindergarten students to write can feel like an uphill battle! After all, writing is a complex task that requires a lot from our young learners. That’s why it’s essential to find ways to make writing more fun and engaging for kindergarteners! In this post, I’m going to share how kindergarten writing crafts can be a helpful addition to literacy instruction that can motivate your students to practice their writing skills.

Benefits of Kindergarten Writing Crafts

A kindergarten writing craft is just what it sounds like: A written response to a prompt that has a corresponding craft, often a topper. These activities can be such a powerful tool for writing practice in kindergarten. Here are just a few reasons why they’re such a beneficial addition to your literacy lesson plans:

1. Encourage Reluctant Writers

In this digital age, students are becoming more reluctant to put pencil to paper and practice writing. This is especially true for young kindergarten students! Writing is one of the most difficult tasks that we ask our young learners to do. They have to apply all of their developing phonics knowledge to figure out how to put their thoughts into writing. Then they have to use their still-developing fine motor skills to physically complete the writing task. It’s no wonder that they’re often less-than-motivated to practice writing!

Writing crafts can add a little bit of fun to the writing process, especially for students who enjoy creating arts and crafts. Completing the writing activity will feel like less of a chore when they have a fun craft to go along with it. The writing becomes just one smaller part of the fun art project. Students will have a motivating reason to finish their writing so they can get to the craft!

2. Enhance Daily Learning Routine

With a jam-packed daily routine, it can feel like there’s no time for traditional kindergarten fun anymore! With so many standards to address and tasks to complete in a given day, things like arts and crafts are often put on the back burner. 

By adding writing crafts to the mix, students will be able to experience the fun of creating something while also practicing important literacy skills. This is an easy way to enhance the daily learning routine with hands-on activities while still fitting it all in!

3. Increase Fine Motor Practice

Since one of the major writing hurdles for young kindergarten students is the physical act of writing, it’s helpful to add as much extra fine motor practice to the daily routine as possible. It’s even more helpful when this practice is engaging for students, since they are more motivated to participate. 

Writing crafts can add extra engagement to fine motor practice. It’s fun for students to put together a craft; they often don’t realize they’re hard at work! As they color, cut, and assemble the topper for their writing, they will be improving their hand strength and coordination. As a result, writing practice will become easier for them as well. 

4. Publish Student Writing

One of the best things we can do to support beginning writers is to publish what they’ve written. When students know that their writing will be seen by other people, they are often more motivated to do their best work. Writing crafts are easy to “publish” by putting them on display in the classroom or hallway.

Students are always so excited to see their writing on display! They proudly point out their craft and writing to their peers or parents. This is a simple thing that can go a long way in making kindergarten students feel like writers!  It takes very little prep time to put together an eye-catching display of completed writing crafts.

5. Incorporate Learning Themes

If you plan themed units in your classroom, writing crafts are an easy way to enhance your lesson plans for those units! You can select a craft and writing prompt that corresponds to the theme. This will give students the chance to apply what they’re learning to a relevant writing prompt. 

One of the biggest challenges young writers face is knowing what to write about. By incorporating a topic that they’re currently focusing on in the classroom, they will already have vocabulary and concepts at the top of their minds. This will make it much easier for them to complete the writing task. When the ideas flow easily, they will be much more motivated to write! (Plus, if your themes correspond to the current season, a display of themed writing crafts can serve as a seasonal bulletin board display.)

Printable Writing Crafts for Kindergarten

If you’re interested in using more writing crafts in your classroom but don’t have the time to plan them out, I’ve got you covered! In fact, I’ve created a resource that will help you plan out all of your writing instruction: The Kindergarten Writing Toolbox membership. 

This monthly membership includes a wide variety of themed activities that you can use to get your students excited about writing! Each monthly theme includes a simple writing craft that’s easy to modify for the needs of your class and your schedule.

For example, each writing craft includes two options: A craft that students can color, cut, and assemble or a simple topper that students just cut out and attach to their papers. Either way, these adorable crafts make writing much more fun and engaging for students. 

In addition to the crafts, the membership includes writing centers, picture writing prompts, and other tools that will help you enhance your writing instruction. If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in the Kindergarten Writing Toolbox, you can click below to learn more about it.

Save These Kindergarten Writing Crafts

Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite kindergarten Pinterest board. You’ll be able to quickly find these writing crafts when you’re looking for a way to motivate your students to write.