This post is the first writing exercise in the death series. It accompanies Remembering Death Before It Was Sadness. As in my previous writing exercises, I use the brilliant sentence-building concepts found in The Writing Revolution and tailor them to our content to teach writing.
❦ I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.” ❦ ― E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web
There’s no need to rush when it comes to writing.
If your children have encountered death but aren’t ready to write about it yet, this doesn’t need to be something pushed on them. But if you have budding authors learning to explore their thinking through words, this exercise might help them weave in their feelings surrounding death.
Children of all ages can benefit from strengthening their thinking through writing at the sentence level. Revisiting the sentence may even improve your writing. I know this process has improved mine.
The Kernel Sentence
One simple way to get children to expand their basic sentences and, subsequently, expand their thinking is to start with a kernel sentence and ask questions. A kernel sentence is the simplest of sentences that includes a subject, one verb, and no modifiers.
Someone died.
That’s your kernel. Just two words.
That’s where you start.
Asking the Right Questions
Once we have our kernel sentence, we can use question words to further investigate the topic.
Who died? Grandma
What happened? She died in her sleep of old age
Where did she die? At home
When did this happen? Two weeks ago
Why did this happen? She had lived a long life
How did she die? Peacefully
Two weeks ago, my grandma died peacefully in her sleep at home after living a long life.
For your youngest children, you could turn this into questions that they respond to verbally, while you write down their answers. For older kids, allow them time to expand these simple sentences into more thorough paragraphs or pages of writing. Sometimes all they need is the kernel to get started.
Tell them they don’t have to edit their writing, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Also, tell them there is no correct answer. Let them open up to the truth of what happened as they choose to.
Keep in mind that these are sample questions. You could change them to elicit different kinds of responses. Start with the basic question words and explore where your feelings take you.
For younger children, you might only want to pick one or two questions for them to consider first.
For example:
Who died? Grandma
When did it happen? At her home
My grandma died at her home.
By starting with the facts, you allow your child to gain clarity over what happened first. Once you know a child can name the situation, then you can move on to confronting feelings around the experience.
Exploring Classic Children’s Literature
You could also apply these same skills to literature if your children aren’t quite ready to explore personal writing.
Here’s a Charlotte’s Web example:
Kernel sentence: Someone died.
Who died? Charlotte
What happened? She was tired
Where did her death take place? At the fair
When did this happen? After she had her babies
Why does this death contain hope? Charlotte lives on through her baby spiders
How did she die? Contendedly
Charlotte died contentedly at the fair after having her babies, knowing she’d live on through her little spiders.
Experiment with this process until it works for you and your children.
Start with the facts, the known pieces.
Once you establish those, you can move on to the emotional experience.
Whether you’re writing about a death in the family or one found in classic literature, let your children know that having the guts to put their feelings into words is a giant step towards making death a sacred part of living.
❦ “Don’t write about Man; write about a man.” ❦ ― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
Remember, the kernel sentence is just the door.
The questions help you walk through it.
Next week, we’ll take a look at another writing exercise to help us process more of our feelings around death. But don’t be afraid to allow your children to explore as much as they feel comfortable with in their own words today. Talk with them about how we transition from one phase to the next, as Charlotte did. And how this is a natural part of life’s journey.