writing workshop

A little while ago I stumbled across this idea of a young writers workshop by Jennifer of the write start via pinterest and had to start a whole board for the writing workshop I was instantly inspired to make for my kiddos.  Recently we have been having a few hiccups with writing around here, it was getting tense and Noah wasn't enjoying it and I needed something to re-spark his love for writing and practicing his letter formation and pencil grip. I knew this would be just the thing we needed. We had an area where I stored some of our papers and our pencils and crayons in glass jars right by our magnetic memo board but I wasn't in love with it.

So I spent a few days searching on gumtree for a shelf I could use since we had nothing here I could transform. I didn't want to spend very much and so was so happy to find a very sturdy book shelf in decent condition for $40.  I used some chipboard letters that I have had for seriously years {think pre-Noah!} and blu-tacked them to the top of the shelf spelling out the words Writing Workshop.

I then just popped our glass jars on there, along with a basket and 2 white boxes from Ikea but felt it needed a little more. I found a spare basket to use on one of the shelves as I was trying not to buy anything new for this project. {except the shelf itself!}  But magazine files were definitely needed to control the clutter and paper down on the bottom shelf.

So I went to Big W and bought the 2 magazine files and the little white drawers. They were a perfect fit and matched the ikea boxes we already had.

We use the magnetic board {which is made from a large Ikea frame and a sheet of colorbond steel} to house our chore charts and a weekly schedule of activities and other bits and pieces.

So here is our writing workshop. :o}

On the top shelf we have a jar of pencils, scissors, pencil sharpener and such. A smaller jar of coloured pencils and an even smaller jar with crayon rocks. A small jar of mini pencils means the kids always have access to the pencils!

The middle shelf has 2 baskets, one with all our laminated flash cards, colour cards etc {more on all of this in another post} and one with our learning games. 

Shut the Box and Animal memory from Molly Dag Made as well as our home made sight word sticks thanks to the idea from Lotta Magazine are the learning games we currently have. The kids LOVE them a lot. 

And then the bottom shelf has 2 ikea boxes {1 filled with heaps of stickers and 1 filled with envelopes}

a set of small cardboard drawers for paper {1 drawer for plain paper and 1 for odd sized coloured paper - wedding invite remnants!}

and 2 magazine files - filled with colouring books and alphabet worksheets and printable mazes etc. One for each child. At some point I will label them all.

 So there you have our writing workshop. I am very pleased with it, and most importantly Noah is loving it. He is enjoying writing practice again and is writing letters and cards to family and friends, writing to do lists, stories. Using his imagination with all the stickers and drawing scenes for the truck stickers, fish stickers etc. And of course because Noah is loving it, Chloe is loving it. 

Mission accomplished :o}

{i just need to move those photos up a smidge now! haha}