Climb on up!

Welcome to the Green-Walled Treehouse, a story blog for kids. It is a place where kids can read stories, as well as submit their own ideas for stories. We will also have submissions open for original stories and artwork from time to time.

Who is a kid?

Primarily, I designed this site for elementary and middle school students, although I hope that it will have content that high school students (and maybe even pre-K kids) will enjoy. The problem is finding a word that encompasses that whole group. Children does not seem to fit and students emphasizes their being in school, which is not the point.

Where does the name come from?

Mostly, The Green-Walled Treehouse is a companion blog of my original writing blog, The Green-Walled Tower. The story of where that name comes from can be found here.

However, the name also invokes several feelings that I want this site to embody. The first is that it’s a tree house. It’s a place to relax and make believe, but it’s also a place of adventure. The walls are green because they are covered with ivy. That shows that it has been here a long time, and yet it is still a place that is green and alive. Finally, the ivy covers the tree house, giving it an air of mystery. You cannot see what the house is like from far away. You have to come in to see.

Why make this site?

I was an English teacher for 13 years and there is nothing that I like more than seeing kids exploring and learning, and using their imaginations. I worry sometimes that students get focused too much on trying to find the “right answer”. That is great for subjects like math, where there is a right answer to find. However, with the big questions in life, there are no single right answers and not always a good way to find them. I want to help students become dreamers through reading and writing in a way they can be actively involved in.

In Conclusion

I will be posting stories here twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some of these stories will come from my own ideas, some will be ones I’ve written from Story Seeds, submitted by kids. There will be occasional story contests, calls for original artwork, and other types of posts. I hope to make it a fun, interactive place for kids of all ages to visit.