The Anderson Courier

The first edition of The Anderson Courier is just hitting the newsstand, courtesy of our very own news reporter, Natalie!

Natalie has been hard at work writing and illustrating her first newspaper with articles, interviews, jokes, movie review, recipe, and more. After reading Some Good News (the 4th book in the Cobble Street Cousins series by Cynthia Rylant), Natalie was inspired to create her own newspaper just like the cousins in the story did.

We brainstormed together what types of stories and features a newspaper might include. We also looked through our local newspaper for ideas, although I had to carefully choose the “kid-friendly” stories/sections for us to look at! We talked a little about including who, what, when, where, why & how in our stories, but I didn’t go into a lot of detail with this since she is still a beginning writer.

She dictated; I typed and formatted. We printed out a dozen or so copies to deliver and mail to family and friends. She is so proud of her newspaper, and I can see us making another one again in the near future!

A couple books we enjoyed from the library while working on this project were Deadline!: From News to Newspaper by Gail Gibbons and Fairytale News by Colin & Jacqui Hawkins (it comes with a “real” Fairytale Newspaper tucked in a pocket in the back of the book!).

Amida at Journey Into Unschooling shared a fun newspaper project, too – a Civil War newspaper called the Union Bugle. Check it out!

Have you made a newspaper with your kids? I’d love to hear all about it!

Tip of the Day: Ask your child to write a journal entry or book report in the style of a news article – don’t forget a catchy headline!