Stretch a Sentence: Creative Writing

My boys struggle with language arts, which frustrates me, because it's one thing I excel at, but I can't figure out how to teach it to my boys.  I've been told I should be an English teacher.  So, why is this so difficult?

In trying to instill a working knowledge of the English language in my boys, I've had to come up with creative teaching methods.  I shared with you last year our Story in a Bag project that was a huge hit with the boys, which is great for getting their creative juices flowing.

Today, I want to share a creative writing task that helps teach how to write better, more interesting sentences.  Once again, I can't take full credit for this idea.  I stumbled across it via Pinterest.  But, I found it was missing a step, so I modified it.  This is called "Stretch a Sentence".

First, here is the original image I found on Pinterest.  I don't know who or what the original source of it is, but it's what I used as a starting point:

Now here is my modified version.  You'll notice I've added a step and changed some wording to make it more understandable and, well, correct:

Another successful creative writing task!  And finding any writing tasks that my boys enjoy is a monumental feat!  Below are my boys' completed sentences and illustrations they each added.

Noah's stretched sentence.

Brandt's stretched sentence.

Have you found creative ways to get your kids writing?  What tricks do you use to teach Language Arts to your kids?  I'd love to hear what you do.