Creative writing ideas and topics for summer

Our guide on creative writing over the summer holidays is full of fun writing ideas and activities for children. Get stuck into descriptive summer writing!

While many parents may worry about their child’s reading or maths skills over summer, are you considering their writing? Writing is an equally important part of summer learning, so let’s take a look at ways you can make writing fun and accessible for your child over the summer. 

Be sure to take a look at our free resources to get more tips for keeping up your child’s learning during the summer break. 

Why children should do creative writing over the summer holidays

Summer writing is one of the many ways you can prevent the ‘summer slide’, the loss of skill children can experience when they don’t practice any of the things they’ve learned in school over the summer. So encouraging your child to do some summer writing is a valuable gift in their education journey.

There are a lot of fun things to learn in summer for children, and writing about them is a good way for them to keep up their spelling and grammar skills. 

The importance of creative writing over the summer holidays 

Summer creative writing is a brilliant way for children to keep on practising their spelling, grammar and sentence structure skills during their break. As essential skills, it’s important to encourage children to keep on top of their writing as much as their reading. 

Creative writing for children is also an amazing outlet, making for a great stress buster and helping them to calm down and focus. So particularly on days when you might need a little peace and quiet, it’s good to encourage them to write a story or write about their summer holidays. 

Creative writing ideas to use this summer

Anyone that’s ever tried to do some creative writing knows that it can be tricky to just sit down and write something. So let’s take a look at some ways to get started with writing in the summer:

• Reading – Now, we’ve already talked about how writing is just as important as reading over the summer, but reading can be a great source of inspiration. In turn, your children will also be keeping on top of their summer reading by looking for inspiration in books. 

• Keeping a diary – For a lot of children a diary might be their first opportunity to write something that’s entirely their own. It can be a great way to boost their confidence in their writing, as it’s something just for them that doesn’t have to be marked by a teacher or fit into any kind of writing brief set by their teacher. It’s also really easy for them to get started with, they just have to write about their day in as much or as little detail as they like. 

• Write about their surroundings – Even if writing is purely descriptive, that’s still good practice. So, if your children are completely stumped for something to write, why not ask them to write about where they are? That could be at home, or you could get outside and take them somewhere exciting to write about. If you’re going away this summer why not ask them to write about the place you’re going to? 

• Worksheets – If all else fails, it’s okay to get out a writing worksheet on a rainy day. These are really helpful if your child needs some writing prompts to help them get ideas flowing. Of course, you don’t want them to feel like they’re at school over the summer, so don’t overload your children with worksheets. A few here and there will be fine though. 

What to write about during the summer

Choosing something to write about for the summer holidays can be the most difficult part for some children. Writing a short story needs some inspiration, so that’s why we’ve come up with a list of summer writing prompts for children to work with. 

Summer writing prompts

Any of these concepts could make a great starting point for writing a summer short story, a descriptive essay or any kind of creative writing. 

• The last week of school before summer

• Write a summer poem

• A summer bucket list of things to do before school starts

• Your favourite summer memory

• Write about a rainy summer’s day and what you did

• A journey through the forest

• A day at the beach

• Write a letter to a friend

• Make up a recipe for a magic potion

• Write a scary story

• Think of a mysterious, magical forest and write about what you’d see there

• The last day of summer

• Write about something new you tried this summer

• Write a letter to your favourite author about your favourite book

• Write a song about your summer holidays

• Write about a long walk you took and what you saw

• Write about what you want to accomplish in school next year.

Summer writing ideas for children

While the above are a great starting point for many children wanting to do some summer creative writing, some children might need help deciding how to format their ideas. Not every piece of summer writing needs to be a short story, maybe your child wants to try something different? Let’s take a look at what they can do. 

Essay writing about the summer holidays

An essay might sound like the last thing your child wants to do over their summer break, but you might also be surprised by how eager they are to write about something that excites them. An essay is amazing fuel for their summer learning as it not only helps them keep practising their spelling and grammar, it also helps them practice their academic writing skills. Knowing how to write a good essay is a must as your children continue their education journey. 

Remember, you don’t need to insist or pressure your child into writing a summer essay. They’ll get plenty of practice in essay writing as they go through school. If they do want to write a summer essay though, you can give them a helping hand. 

A summer essay doesn’t need to be stressful either. It’s just something for your child to do for themselves. They can write about the whole summer and what they’ve done (keeping a diary would be great for that), just one fun summer experience or something new they learned about over the summer. 

Summer creative writing ideas

Creative writing is a fun way to keep children’s brains engaged and ensure they’re still practicing their spelling and grammar. Of course, even with all the story prompts in the world it can be a little tricky to figure out what to write, or how to write it. 

Writing doesn’t have to be done alone. You can either sit down together and write a story with your child, or you can see they want to invite their friends over and all write something together. You never know what children might come up with when they put their heads together, so you might even be in for a fun surprise!

They could also express their artistic talent by drawing a comic book. That could be about an idea they came up with themselves, or a comic about their summer holiday, or something about one of the prompts we listed earlier. 

They could even try rewriting the ending to their favourite book. See how they’d tell the story if they were in charge. 

Be sure to also take a look at these tips for young authors! 

Summer descriptive writing ideas

Descriptive writing isn’t too unlike creative writing, but rather than writing entirely from their imagination children are encouraged to take in their surroundings or a situation. It’s a really important comprehensive skill to have, and can be a great little boredom buster if they’re stuck in on a rainy day, or they’re maybe not enjoying sunbathing on the beach as much as you are. 

The summer holidays can be a great source of inspiration for descriptive writing. You can take your children to the park or a local nature reserve to write about what they can see (not to mention their other senses too!). They could even try writing a review about a place they’ve been to over the summer or a film they’ve seen.

A summer journal or diary can be a great way for children to practice their descriptive writing. They can take down notes throughout the day and expand on them later, a very handy essay writing technique, or write everything from memory at the end of the day. Having their own journal or diary also gives children a sense of independence which can really boost their writing confidence. 

Fun summer writing activities 

The most important thing you can do to encourage your children to write over the summer is to make it fun! Isn’t that always the best way to get children to do something that’ll benefit them in the long run? 

Try asking them to do something like write a letter to a friend. That gives them something to look forward to because eventually, they’ll be able to give that letter to their friend. They could be summer pen pals, both working on their reading and writing while having fun doing it. 

Changing up the scenery that children write in can be fun and exciting too. If you want to work on their descriptive writing, as we mentioned above, you can take them somewhere exciting to write about.

Get confident with creative writing

If you want to help your child get a head start with their creative writing over the summer, English tuition might be the way forward. They’ll be able to practice their English skills online either by learning independently or with a tutor, and they’ll still have plenty of time to get out and enjoy the summer. 

Our English tutors will work together with your child to identify the areas they want to improve in, whether that’s spelling, grammar or coming up with ideas for their writing. Why not see if your child wants to improve their creative writing this summer?