Write a letter from a lion in Africa to a lion in western India, asking what home is like there.Fact: lions today live in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and in one population in western India.
It is dawn on the savanna and the lions are settling down. Write the morning as the day animals take over.Fact: a lion's activity generally peaks after dusk and goes on in bursts until dawn.
Every lion in the pride is asleep except one cub. Write its afternoon.Angle: everyone it tries to wake has a different way of saying no.
A house cat who likes her own company is shown a film of a lion pride. Write her review.Fact: no wild cat is as social as the lion, which lives in groups of relatives called prides.
A lion cub tries to explain to a zebra foal how it can have four mothers. Write the talk.Fact: a lion cub may nurse from other females in the pride as well as from its own mother.
A lioness licks her sister's head, the one place a lion cannot reach. Write the favor and how it is returned.Fact: lions lick each other most on the head and neck, places a lion cannot lick itself.
A lioness returns to the pride with cubs nobody has met. Write the introductions.Fact: a lioness keeps new cubs hidden and brings them into the pride at six to eight weeks old.
A pride of fifteen lions has one small patch of shade. Write the afternoon as the shade moves.Fact: the average pride is around 15 lions, Wikipedia's lion article says.
Each lioness has her own place in the hunting line. Write the plan as one of them scratches it in the dust.Fact: in a group hunt each lioness has a favored position, out on the wing or in the center.
The lionesses come back with nothing, again. Write the pride's evening.Fact: lionesses usually succeed in only one hunt out of several tries, National Geographic Kids says.
Lions rest for most of the day. Write a pride's argument over who has to get up.Fact: lions spend much of their time resting and are inactive for about twenty hours a day.
The male of the pride has one main job, and tonight he has to do it. Write the lion's walk around the edge.Fact: the main job of the males in a pride is defending the pride's territory.
Two lion brothers leave the pride together. Write a week of their wandering, from the bossier brother's side.Fact: nomadic lions wander in pairs or alone, and pairs are more frequent among related males.
Two lions of one pride meet after a day apart and rub heads. Write what the greeting says.Fact: head rubbing appears to be a lion's greeting, seen often after time apart from the others.
Write a lion pride as a team photo: who stands where, who will not look at the camera, who is asleep.Angle: describe the picture, then the minute before it was taken.
Write a lion pride's morning stretch, lion by lion, in the order they wake.Angle: one is up before the sun and one has to be stepped over. Who is last, as always?
Write a lion pride's sleeping pile from the middle of it.Angle: whose tail, whose paw, whose snore? Describe a family by what is lying on you.
Write a pride of lions holding a family meeting under the one good shade tree.Fact: usually all the lionesses in a pride are related: mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters.
A roar at night 15
A camp cook hears a lion roar while the stew is on. Write the next five minutes in the kitchen tent.Angle: the roar is far off and the cook has heard hundreds. The new helper has not.
A lion with a sore throat cannot roar tonight. Write how the pride gets its message out anyway.Angle: who roars for him, and do the neighbors notice the difference?
A lion's roar reaches a village five miles off as something less than a roar. Write what is left of it when it arrives.Angle: a ripple in a cup, a dog lifting its head. Who knows what it is, and who guesses wrong?
A lioness far from the pride hears its roar and answers. Write her walk home by sound.Fact: a pride splits into smaller groups that keep in contact with roars.
A roar at night wakes a lion cub who has never heard its father before. Write what it thinks the sound is.First line: The dark had a voice, and my mother did not even lift her head.
A scientist records roars to tell one lion from another by voice. Write her night in the truck.Fact: a 2025 study found four stages in a roar: moaning, full roaring, a shorter deeper roar, grunting.
The lions on two sides of a valley have roared at each other every night for years. Write the night one side stays silent.Angle: is silence good news or bad? Let the other pride argue about it.
Not every lion sound is a roar. Write a talk between two lions at night that never gets louder than a hum.Fact: lions also puff, hum and breathe out with a sound like purring; cubs meow and bleat.
The sun has just set and the first lion roar of the night goes up. Write the next minute at a water hole.Fact: a male lion's loud roar is usually heard after sunset.
Tonight's roar is a new voice. Write what the lion pride makes of a stranger at the edge of its land.Fact: males and females both defend the pride against outside lions that try to join it.
What is a lion saying when it roars? Write the roar out in words, as a notice pinned to the night.Fact: a male's roar scares off intruders and calls strays back to the pride.
Write a lion's roar on its way across the dark plain, from the lion's chest to the farthest ear that hears it.Fact: lions most often roar at night, and a roar advertises that the lion is there.
Write a poem in which each line is louder than the one before, ending with the lion's roar.Angle: start with grass, a cricket, a paw. Save the lion for the last line.
Write the silence just after a lion roars.Angle: what stops, what holds its breath, and what is the first small sound to come back?
Write what a zebra, a jackal and a child in a tent each do when a lion roars in the night.Fact: a lion's roar can be heard from as far as five miles away.
The cub who would not nap 15
A lion cub is too awake to nap and too small to be useful. Write the list of jobs it invents for itself.Angle: tail guard, fly counter, shade inspector. Which job does it turn out to be good at?
A lion cub notices its spots are fainter than last month. Write its worry, and its mother's answer.Fact: a lion is born with dark spots that fade away as it grows up.
A lion cub that will not nap pounces on its father's tail. Write the father's patience running out, slowly.Fact: one male lion may let cubs toy with his mane or tail; another snarls and bats them away.
A lion cub's tail has no tuft yet. Write the day it notices that every grown lion has one.Fact: the dark tuft at the tip of a lion's tail is absent at birth and plain to see by seven months.
A wide-awake lion cub watches the grass for an hour and sees what the sleeping pride misses. Write its report.Angle: a tortoise, a dung beetle, a bird with a plan. Nobody believes the cub at dinner.
Every lion in the pride is asleep except one cub. Write its afternoon.Angle: everyone it tries to wake has a different way of saying no.
It is moving day again, and one lion cub is the last to be carried to the new den. Write the wait.Fact: a lioness moves small cubs to a new den several times a month, carrying them by the nape.
The lion cub who would not nap falls asleep at last, at the worst possible moment. Write when.Angle: in the middle of its own pounce, or just as the pride gets up to leave?
The lion cub who would not nap spends the afternoon stalking its sleeping aunt's twitching ear. Write the stalk.Fact: young lions first show stalking behavior at around three months of age.
The lionesses leave at dusk and a lion cub is told to stay put. Write its evening of guarding nothing in particular.Fact: young lions join the hunt only when nearly a year old.
Two lion cubs wrestle while the pride sleeps. Write the match as a whisper, so nobody wakes.Angle: every pounce has to be silent. What finally makes the noise that ends it?
The whole pride tries to get one lion cub to nap. Write each lion's method and why it fails.Angle: licking, ignoring, a heavy paw, a dull story. The fifth method works by accident.
Write the excuses a lion cub gives for not napping, one for each time it is told.First line: "I am resting my eyes by keeping them open."
Write the nap the lion cub finally takes, as a dream.Angle: in the dream it is enormous, and everyone else is told to lie down.
Write the story of the lion cub who would not nap as its grandmother tells it, years later, to that cub's own cubs.First line: Your father once stayed awake for an entire afternoon, and we all paid for it.
A day on the savanna 15
A giraffe, a zebra and a lion all want the same water hole at dusk. Write who drinks when.Angle: nobody is chased. It is all waiting, watching and pretending not to watch.
A lion gets a letter addressed to the King of the Jungle. Write the reply, sent from the savanna.Fact: the lion lives in grasslands, savannas and shrublands, Wikipedia's lion article says.
A lion is a big cat. Write what a lion and a house cat would agree on, and the one thing they would not.Fact: for its size, strength and hunting skill the lion is counted among the big cats.
A safari guide is asked the same question about lions for the hundredth time. Write the answer he would like to give.Angle: the question is whether lions ever do anything. His real answer is polite.
A young male lion's mane starts to come in. Write the day he first catches sight of it.Fact: a mane starts growing when a lion is an adolescent and is full size at around four years old.
Describe the savanna at noon from under a lion's shade tree, with everything too hot to move.Angle: heat shimmer, flies, one tail. Use short sentences, as if words were effort.
The dry season ends. Write the first rain on the savanna from a lion's flat rock.First line: The dust lay down like a dog that had been told.
The grass is tall and gold, and so is a lion. Write a zebra's guide to telling grass from lion.Angle: the zebra has three tips and no real confidence in any of them.
It is dawn on the savanna and the lions are settling down. Write the morning as the day animals take over.Fact: a lion's activity generally peaks after dusk and goes on in bursts until dawn.
Write a day on the savanna in which the lion is the least important thing that happens.Angle: follow a dung beetle, a weaver bird or a termite. The lion is only a shape asleep.
Write a letter from a lion in Africa to a lion in western India, asking what home is like there.Fact: lions today live in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and in one population in western India.
Write a lion's yawn at dusk on the savanna, from the first stretch to the moment it stands up.Angle: slow it right down. A whole day of rest ends in this one yawn.
Write a savanna thunderstorm as a lion pride sits through it.Angle: cats and rain. Who sulks, who drinks from a puddle, who pretends it is fine?
Write one day on the savanna hour by hour, as a lion spends it.Fact: on an average day lions walk for two hours and eat for fifty minutes.
Write the savanna as a lion smells it on a walk at dusk.Angle: rain coming, another pride's edge, zebras that passed at noon. No sights, only scents.
How it works
These writing prompts about lions start from the most social of the wild cats. Most of a lion's day is rest, so the prompts find their stories in shade, greetings, a restless cub and a roar after dark.
Read the full guide
What a lion's roar is for
A roar is a message. National Geographic Kids says it scares off intruders and calls strays back to the pride, and it is usually heard after sunset. Fifteen prompts work from that: the roar, the answer, and the silence afterward.
A family of cats
The lionesses of a pride are usually related: mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters. They greet by rubbing heads and lick the places another lion cannot reach. The pride prompts are about who sleeps where, who gets up first and who minds the cubs.
Questions and answers
What is a good writing prompt about lions?
One where almost nothing happens, which is a lion's day. A pride of fifteen lions has one small patch of shade: write the afternoon as the shade moves.
How far can a lion's roar be heard?
As far as five miles, or eight kilometers. National Geographic Kids and Wikipedia's lion article give the same figure. Lions roar mostly at night.
How many lions are in a pride?
Around 15 on average, Wikipedia's lion article says. Females usually stay with the pride for life, National Geographic Kids says, while males often last only two to four years.
Are these writing prompts about lions for kids?
Yes. No prompt describes a kill. The hunts that appear are a plan scratched in the dust and an evening when the lionesses come home with nothing.