5 Printable Summer Journal Pages to Get Your Kids Writing

Do you vow every summer to make sure your kids still read and write over the break?

I know I do. Then I am always thoroughly disappointed when no one wants to do anything of the sort. In fact, as a mom of all boys, I feel like all anyone ever wants to do is stare at screens all day. That is our battle as a generation.

Every year I enter in with delusions of grandeur, but that is okay. Yes, my intentions are good, and I do manage to get some work out of all of them, in spite of their protests.

I get it. This is summer. They don’t have to spend all day on writing, but five or ten minutes could help them stay sharp.

Here is a big lesson I have learned over the past fourteen years: The easier their work looks to them, the more likely they are to pour a little effort into it without melting into a whiny puddle in the floor.

My boys typically turn their noses up at all journal prompt books or even keeping a diary. However, when I simply hand them a simple looking worksheet, they can fly through that fairly quickly.

These journal pages are a little different than the usual writing prompts I have found online because they were tailor made for our house fiction writer. Once or twice during this past school year, of first grade, he cranked out twelve pages of a fiction story, so I would not call him a reluctant writer. Yet here we are in summer, and he is not writing anything at all. I made these journal pages to get his juices flowing again.

Next time I make a pack of these, I will do non-fiction pages for my nine-year-old. In our house we seem to have two who prefer writing non-fiction (which is me too, so I can fully relate to that), and then I have my two who enjoy fiction writing.

My best tip for encouraging summer writing:

Rewards, rewards, rewards! I do not mean big exciting rewards. Just use the one thing that they actually want to do to hold over their heads. ha! At our house, that is video games. You do your journal, brush your teeth, and do your chore, then you can play your games for a while, and I will leave you alone.

You know I have all boys and do not know a thing about raising girls, but I tried to make these pages usable for both boys and girls. Instead of going with a theme, I made them all completely different to keep it interesting. I thought the green one turned out odd, but my son said it looked like the most fun to him, so I kept it.

Good luck! I hope these will help you with that summer slump!

Click here to print all of them.

If you have a verbose writer, the lines will not hold all that they have to say. Encourage them to just flip the paper over and finish on the back. I wish we had that problem here. Instead, I have to say, “Can you write a little more details please?”

Click here to print the pack.