Here is a fantastic, fun, and free activity that teaches about using figurative language (like alliteration -- get it?). Last summer, I wanted to launch a line of activity books for gifted children and advanced learners. Rather than approach professional education writers who commonly haven't set foot in a real classroom, I approached classroom teachers of gifted students and asked them to spend some of their summer putting together some of their favorite activities.

The result is a series of great little activity books that we released in January of 2005. Creative Writing: Using Fairy Tales to Enrich Writing Skills (Grades 4-8) is an exciting book in the series by Teresa Cannon Hackett. Teresa does a great job of teaching creative writing skills identified as important by the National Council for Teachers of English and does so in a fun and interesting way.

Download a free creative writing activity from the book and use it with your students (the PDF file is about 600K so give it a few seconds to download). I added a footnote on the bottom of the activity sheets that gives you permission to reproduce the pages for classroom use. Let me know what you think. I'm always interested in getting your feedback.