Last week I shared about our family’s experiences using Junior Writer. Another fun tool for writing practice that gives kids a sense of achievement and parents or grandparents something to treasure is Tikatok.

With Tikatok, children can create and publish their own stories. Children can work in one of two ways. On the Tikatok app, they can create the story and pictures entirely electronically, with “stickers” and/or their own drawings made in the app.

Or they can write the story on Tikatok and draw pictures the old fashioned way and scan the pictures to add them as illustrations.

Kids have three different choices about the types of books they’ll make:

1. Personalized stories, suitable for any age of child.
2. Stories made with a story starter.
3. Stories that are entirely their own creations.

Here are some of the story starters kids can use to spark their imaginations:

Once a StorySpark™ is chosen, Tikatok generates certain story elements for the child, and others must be filled in. We’ll choose one as an example. Let’s choose Animals and Bugs. Tikatok gives us the following story options:

An Animal Holiday – Animals love to go on vacation, too. Write about what your favorite animal does while on holiday.

My Favorite Animal – A book to learn all about my favorite animal.

A Safari Photo Adventure – Get your cameras ready for an African safari where you’ll see many rare and wondrous species!

A Penguin Adventure –  A penguin takes a wrong turn and ends up far from home. Help the poor penguin get back!

Fish Finds a Sunken Ship – A fish that lives deep in the ocean explores a sunken ship!

City Dogs in the Wild – What happens when a couple of city dogs go to the woods and meet their wild brothers and sisters?

Let’s choose A Penguin Adventure. After we choose a name for our Penguin and whether the character is male or female, our story is generated, and we can start illustrating it, using sticker illustrations or from a child’s own drawings.

Some story sparks require children to enter more information, some less. Or there is the option of creating an original story entirely from the child’s own imagination.

In the end, children can publish their stories in ebook or print book format, making a keepsake book for their families.

And for Wednesday only, Tikatok is offering free digital publishing!