Daily Writing Journal for Kids: A Full Year of Writing Prompts

This is a printable daily writing journal designed for children in grades 1 to 3 (ages 6 to 9). It holds one short writing prompt for every day of a 36-week school year: 180 prompts in all. You print a page, the child draws and writes for about ten minutes, and you check it together. Every prompt comes at three levels, and US Letter and A4 are both included.

It is made for homeschooling parents with no teaching background, and it works just as well for special education, tutoring and morning work in a classroom.

How to use it

1. Print today's page. The pages run in order from Week 1, Day 1, and none of them is dated.
2. Read the prompt out loud and talk about it for a minute. The child draws the idea, then writes on the lines. A word bank and a sentence starter are on the page to help.
3. The child marks three boxes at the bottom: capital letter, finger spaces, end mark. Then they read it to you.

Page 3 sets out the ten minutes step by step, with words you can say out loud. Pages 5 to 7 show one page filled in at each level before the child is asked to write anything.

What is on every daily page

• The prompt in large type, for example "Describe a tree you have seen." or "Tell how to plant a seed."
• A picture box to draw in (Levels 1 and 2) or three planning boxes (Level 3).
• A word bank of six helpful words.
• A sentence starter, such as "The tree is ..."
• Primary writing lines: top line, dashed middle line and base line.
• A three-box check: capital letter, finger spaces, end mark.

Three levels, same prompts

• Level 1: trace the starter words over the dots and finish one sentence. 3 rows, 14 mm tall, and a big picture box.
• Level 2: write two to four sentences. 4 rows, 13 mm tall.
• Level 3: plan in three boxes, then write five or more sentences. 7 rows, 10 mm tall, with a "go further" tip.

Day 57 is the same prompt on the same page number at every level, so you can move a child up or down on any day, and children on different levels can write about the same thing.

36 weeks, eight kinds of writing

Each week stays with one kind of writing for five days, and the kinds take turns through the year: about me, opinion, how-to, story, describing, facts and information, letters and lists, and imagining.

The prompts are written so that any child can answer them. None of them assumes a particular family, home, school, faith, holiday or country.

What is inside (199 pages in each journal file)

• For the parent (11 pages): start here, how to run a 10-minute writing time, how to choose the level, a filled-in example at each level, what to do when the child says "I don't know what to write", how to respond to spelling mistakes, the year at a glance, the eight kinds of writing with a question to ask for each, and what good looks like in grades 1, 2 and 3.
• A progress chart for the child to color in.
• 180 daily pages.
• For the child (4 pages): an editing checklist, a personal word list, a "my best writing" page and a page of extra lines.
• Two certificates (halfway and end of year) and a page on printing.

What you download

• The journal at Level 2 in color, in US Letter and in A4.
• One ZIP with Level 1 and Level 3 in color, plus a black and white print edition of all three levels that goes easy on ink. Each one comes in Letter and A4, with a one-page guide to the files.
• A four-page parent record you can type into (Letter and A4): dates, days done, notes for each of the 36 weeks, and a checklist of what to look for by grade.

Good to know

• Both paper sizes and all three levels are in the download. You do not have to choose when you buy.
• Print at 100% or "actual size", on one side. You may print any page as often as you need for your own children or your own class.
• The children's pages use US spelling (color, favorite, gray).
• Secular. No religious content and no holiday prompts.
• This is daily writing practice, not a full writing curriculum. It does not teach grammar or spelling rules lesson by lesson, it makes no claim to cover any set of standards, and it makes no promise about results.
• The fillable parent record is made for a desktop PDF reader such as the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Many phone and tablet apps do not keep typed entries.
• The prompts and guidance were written and checked with the help of AI tools. All pictures and lettering are drawn by the publisher. Every word bank word is checked against a published English word list.
• This is a digital download. Nothing is posted to you, and you need a printer or a print shop.