Creative Writing Lesson — Anthropomorphism

This is from a lesson from another unit study I haven’t put out yet. It’s a lesson on anthropomorphism–when something inanimate becomes human-like in form and/or behavior. The easiest example is all the books and movies where animals act like people.

The unit study is more middle school/high school so I eased my daughter into the lesson like this. (There’s an example for high school at the end.)

I had my daughter write a story about a pencil. She gave me a short, cute, funny story about Henry, the pencil. I then typed her story into a stapleless book and added on each page things like:

Henry thought, ”

Henry said, ”

Henry cried out, ”

She then added in Henry’s comments and words, anthropomorphizing him.

Here’s the link for making a stapleless book. You type it in and it puts it together for you. http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/stapleless/index.html

If you want to try and go for it all at once. Here’s a great example of an umbrella taking on a personality. This was written by a high school student. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KuwXZBz6TS4/SeuCsSIALMI/AAAAAAAAAlA/HiL_M-NSfcM/s1600-h/umbrella.jpg