Make a List - Creative Writing Exercise

This worked so well in the classroom, I had to try it at home.

We would "play" Make a List quite often. The children loved it. I say "play" because that is what the children would say. They considered it a game. I consider it a good exercise in making them THINK.

I give a topic and they write as many things as they can think of to fit the topic. I set the time for about 2 minutes. Then we share our lists. While they are sharing, I add all their good ideas to my list. I share my list as well.  While we are sharing, I allow them to write another good idea that comes to their minds.  After all, we are trying  to compile as big a list as we can. They would try to be the one to have the most (they were so competitive). 

I guess we made it a game, of sorts. If someone shares an idea you have, both have to cross it off their lists. You get points for how many you have that no one else has. I do not tell them if I had it on my list. I just keep track of the BIG list. Some days we do two or three of these. They kept getting better at this all year. Then we count how many things we had for the list. Sometimes children will come up to me later and add another idea to one of the lists...so I finally started keeping the lists. We then started trying to see if we could come up with a longer list than any before.

Some topics were:

• red things
• things that smell
• animals with four legs
• things that go up and down  ( You wouldn't believe the number of great things we thought of for this one!)
• things with feathers
• things that fly
• things made of wood
• things at a birthday party
• ways to move
• kinds of homes