🎵 It's the most wonderful time of the year 🎵
The festive season offers many opportunities for creative writing.
Here are four writing prompts accompanied by images and suggested vocabulary, designed for Years 5 and 6. These prompts incorporate elements of mystery, fantasy, and science to support and inspire creative writing.
1. The Endless Snow Globe Storm 🌨️
For three days, a blizzard has been raging inside Grandma’s antique snow globe. The tiny village inside seems to be trying to communicate—strange shapes appear in the swirling snow, and lights flicker in the tiny windows. What are they trying to tell you, and why?
Mystery/Setting: blizzard, swirling, frosty, antique, delicate, miniature, snowdrift, illuminated, mysterious, glowing, whirling, shimmering
Action/Plot: decipher, signal, communicate, flicker, unravel, investigate, beckon, vanish, reveal
Emotion/Tone: eerie, urgent, puzzling, intriguing, chilling, curious
2. The Last Polar Explorer ❄️
You’re in the library and have discovered the journal of an Arctic scientist who vanished while investigating the sudden disappearance of the Northern Lights. The final entry mentions a mysterious cave and a glowing light. Can you finish the diary entry or even piece together the clues to solve the mystery?
Arctic/Setting: tundra, glacier, expedition, aurora, luminous, cavern, frostbite
Action/Plot: explore, vanish, investigate, discover, trail, reveal, decode, decipher, retrieve, preserve
Emotion/Tone: adventurous, mysterious, determined, cautious, brave, hopeful
3. The Night Everything Stopped 🚗
On Christmas Eve, every vehicle in your city suddenly stops working. With only three hours left until midnight, you must help your family get home and maybe save the city in the process...
Modern/Setting: underground, frozen, halted, suspended, stranded, malfunction, gridlock
Action/Plot: improvise, navigate, repair, assist, deliver, solve, notify, coordinate, brainstorm
Emotion/Tone: frantic, clever, resourceful, challenging
4. The Quantum Christmas Tree 🎄
Your class’s Christmas tree, part of a scientific experiment, begins to grow uncontrollably, doubling in size every hour. You have 24 hours to figure out what caused the phenomenon and stop it before it engulfs the school.
Science/Setting: experiment, quantum, dimension, phenomenon, growth, mutation, unstable, lab, roots, engulf, expand
Action/Plot: analyse, investigate, hypothesise, measure, calculate, prevent, dismantle, reverse, shrink, stop, devise
Emotion/Tone: thrilling, high-stakes, inventive, determined, problem-solving, suspenseful
We’d love to see the stories your pupils create! Share their writing with us on social media and tag us—we can’t wait to read their responses to these prompts!