Halloween is a really inspiring time for writing. Children love wearing their Halloween costumes and really get into character. The costume stimulates their imaginations. There are also so many good word choices for writing a creepy story – especially for older children. Molly was determined to be a cat and was thrilled with her lovely cat costume. She particularly liked the mask and the fur trim.
I got Molly to plan her story first and made her a simple templet with a beginning, middle and end. I was going to see how she did with this and possibly just get her to write a couple of sentences in each box. However, she had lots of ideas and was really keen to write them down so I made her a simple writing page with some lines on it and some Halloween cats to go with her costume.
Her idea was a story of a cat with a missing tail as we couldn’t find the tail off her costume when she went to put it on to take some photos. I asked her a few questions about what would happen at each point without steering the ideas for her. Her sisters are going to dress as pumpkins so she decided pumpkins stole the cat’s tail. I’m not sure where the idea of a box of sweets filled with worms came from but it was a great ending!
When Molly was writing I got her to tell me each sentence first. I let her spell the words herself but said them slowly for her to help her sound them out. I also tried to get her to check for capital letters at the start of sentences. She did the writing over two days and so needed a bit of a reminder of what she had planned, although I was sure the story ended with the cat giving the pumpkins the sweets originally. On the second day she had been practicing her cursive writing at school so she was trying to use that in her writing.
The Cat Who Lost Her Tail
Her name is Midnight.She has beautiful ears. Her tail is pretty and very spotty. She was looking in the water. In the water was fish. The pumpkins take the tail. She is crying. The cat did not know. The cat was sad. She chased the pumpkins. They jumped at her.
The cat went a secret way. She crept up on the pumpkins. The naughty pumpkins gave a packet of sweets but it was actually worms. The worms jumped out. The pumpkins laughed so much the tail went flying through the air. The cat catched it in her hand.
If you want to use the writing frame or planning sheet it is free to download here:
Halloween Cat – story writing planning sheet
Halloween Cat – story writing frame
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Disclaimer: I was sent the girls’ Halloween costumes for the purposes of this post – as well as a set of pens to do the writing and a voucher for taking part.
