One of my most popular posts on my homelife blog was on creating a home writing center.  This was a very easy project to put together and has seen YEARS of use.  I wrote this post, initially, when me daughter was in kindergarten.  She’s now in 4th grade.  In the beginning, this was hung in the kitchen and used daily.  As the kids grew up, it has now been moved to my daughter’s room.  She uses it most often when her friends are over and they want to write a song, a play, or a book.  I thought it was worth a re-post on the literacy blog.

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Here’s the original post.

My kids love to write, especially my daughter.  She’s always getting into my cupboards, looking for envelopes, sticky notes, or paper.  The kids have their own art cupboard, but for some reason, they like my things best.  Today we created a writing center, just for the kids. 

We started with some pegboard and a little trim from Lowe’s.  The pegboard was precut to 2’x4′.  The nice people at Lowe’s can cut the trim, but I just cut mine with a hand saw.

I made a frame to go around the edges.  In the interest in saving a few cents, I just used a small piece on the bottom.  No one will see the bottom and it just needs to be pushed out from the wall a little.

I drilled pilot holes in the pegboard and trim, to keep the wood from splitting.

I bought a few accessories in the pegboard department at Lowe’s.

The clear wall file holders came from Staples.  I used my Silhouette to cut the vinyl letters.

I painted the board the same color as the wall.  I wanted it to blend in.

Then came the fun part.  The kids helped me add the bins.  I hit the dollar store on the way home and bought envelopes, sticky notes, blank cards, notepads, and stickers I also made a few blank books and put those in a bin.  My daughter is in kindergarten and loves to make her own books.

The two wall file bins are for paper and projects.  Blank paper is always a must in the writing center.  The project bin is for all of the works-in-progress.  We always have cards we are working on, books in progress, and letters that need addresses and stamps.

As a final touch, we added a hanger for sight words.  My daughter’s teacher sends her sight word cards home as they learn them in class.  This will be a great tool to have close by!

The new writing center was used within the first 2 minutes of completion!

Happy writing!