How to Create a Newspaper With a Child

Embark on a fun after school activity with your child by developing a fascinating family newspaper. Use these strategies to help your child write, design and print a paper that not only captures your life and times, but also helps reinforce basic spelling, writing and reading comprehension skills.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Paper and pencil
• Camera
• Clip art
• Word processing program

1. Decide on the focus of the newspaper with your child. You can cover important events from the year, updates on family hobbies or sporting events, a recent vacation or daily events like a trip to the park or a Friday game night.
2. Give your child a simple framework for writing the "articles," like an introductory sentence, two to three details and a paragraph to sum up the action. She can also call people to get their thoughts and quotes to include in the text.
3. Edit the articles and either let your child make the corrections in a computer file or at least explain the changes you've made to the spelling, grammar or punctuation.
4. Let your child use your digital camera or buy him a disposable camera so he can take photos to accompany each story. You can also find graphics to liven up the newspaper on free clip art websites (see Resources).
5. Put the paper together by importing the title, text, photos and graphics into a simple template created in your word processing software. Also consider assembling pages manually by printing the stories in simple rectangles and squares and arranging them on the page with photos and embellishments like stickers and die cuts (see Resources).
6. Take the computer file or hard copy to a local print shop or office supply store to have copies printed for friends and family to enjoy.