With the inclusion of WriteShop’s full-length, incremental writing curriculum in Cathy Duffy’s well-respected 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum; their products have been climbing the internal charts every homeschooler keeps in their mind of curricula providers in certain subjects.  Their flagship WriteShop program offers writing instruction for students starting in grade six through grade 12, with a series in the works for elementary students with the first title already released.  Amongst their new offerings are the WriteShop StoryBuilders card decks for use as a fun, informal supplement to spur creative writing and storytelling activities.

Available as e-books or instant delivery, the StoryBuilders decks are currently available in four sets of cards: World of People, World of Animals, World of Sports and the Christmas Mini-Builder.  Each full-sized deck includes 192 StoryBuilder cards with one set in black and white for printing on coloured cardstock, or a colour version for printing on white cardstock according to your preference.  48 blank cards are also provided for writing your own cards.  The Mini-Builder contains 96 cards. 

Each deck includes cards to be drawn to establish the character, character traits, setting and plot for spontaneous, creative writing projects.  The cards are either printed on color-coded cardstock, or the words on each are coloured according to category.  A number of suggestions for incorporating the cards into your writing/language arts schedule are provided with various approaches to selecting cards, choosing elements, writing projects and incorporating narration/storytelling for pre-readers.

When I saw that we’d received the World of Sports StoryBuilder as one of our review selects I was a bit disappointed.  Our family isn’t particularly athletic, we don’t participate in the traditional organized sports of our region: hockey, soccer, curling, Ukrainian dance etc.  After going through the deck I was pleasantly surprised to find a wide variety of physical activities included.  When paired with the range of character traits, settings and plots wealth of storylines outside of the typical offerings provided by sports oriented products are available.  Imagine an argumentative hiker who learns a lesson at the airport; or an unselfish jump roper who suffers an injury at the pond.  A plethora of basic scenarios ranging from the bizarre (if cards are selected randomly) to the profound (if cards are purposefully chosen) are available to young writers.  The choices are varied enough, and the inclusion of the character traits provides the clear option to focus upon character-driven stories rather than the purely action based tales of athleticism that our family would have difficulties relating to.

Living on a farm, the World of Animals StoryBuilder seemed more up our alley as far as our natural interests go.  The list of unusual characters goes beyond the standard barnyard favourites and includes a boa constrictor, dinosaur, octopus and many others.  Of course the dog, cow, horse etc. are included as well.  The random selections from these cards are hilarious and seem just the stuff of successful children’s picture books.  Many stories for children involve odd animals in unusual locations; who can tell where these prompts will lead?  A bossy giraffe sees strange footprints in the Arctic (sounds unlikely, I know); or a hysterical monkey is found under the couch during a sudden storm.  There is much fun to be found here.

I wish these cards had been available to me as a young writer.  During my elementary school years I was involved in a special creative writing program, but I often had difficulty developing the basis of a story, despite the fact that I loved to write.  My plots were often thin, and I had a difficult time carrying them to completion.  The StoryBuilder card sets would have provided me with an invaluable fount of possibilities to trigger the process of building a story.

The cards are sturdy when printed on cardstock, and are reproducible within a single family or classroom should they need to be replaced.  At $7.99 per set these affordable resources will provide hours of fun, spur of the moment writing.  The ‘on-the-spot’ nature of the spontaneous prompts also helps to develop rapid-fire thinking skills.  Whether your child is a reluctant writer, or one who loves creative writing but has a hard time developing storylines, this new resource from WriteShop is certainly worth adding to your language arts program.

Available directly from WriteShop, selected products are also available from The Old Schoolhouse Store.  Reviews of the other sets can be found at the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.