September 11th is coming up on Tuesday. We are going to spend a couple of days writing about the events of that day. I wanted to make the kids some writing paper for this project. These September 11th writing pages are free to download. I hope they are helpful! ~Liesl Here are some suggestions for using these blank 9/11 writing pages. Research and write about the events of that day....
At the beginning of the year, many students are asked to do personal or narrative essays… my kids are writing personal essays as well! I came across this writing resource that has 500 writing prompts and felt like it was such a great writing resource, I wanted to share it with you. It’s a free printable. These are generally for older students, but below I’ll also add in the link...
We have been using this fairy tale stationery in our Writing Workshop to practice creating stories with dialogues. Specifically, the kids are focusing on using quotation marks and commas properly. This packet has writing pages for these fairy tales: Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks, and Frankenstein. Mini-Lesson: Before we began writing, we talked about the many variations and stylistic differences among...
How do you help kids improve their essay writing skills? For many years, I worked on essay writing with students (I taught high school & college history) and now as a homeschooler, I’m working on essay writing skills with my own kids. I thought I would share some of writing strategies that I am using with my kids as they learn to write in this genre. A few days ago,...
Today, I have some free creative writing paper for you. This set includes various mythological creatures: dragon, centaur, dwarf, gargoyle, goblin, dryad, and so forth. My girls thought these were neat and I have printed out these pages to store in our Writing Workshop area for when they are in the mood! Down below, I’ll include some of the links to why we started using a Writing Workshop in our...
My girls thought it would be really fun to spend some time writing about the holidays and writing Christmas stories. 20+ Holiday Writing Prompt Ideas Here are just a few of them: If I could do one thing to make the world a better place this year, what would it be? What is your favorite (and/or least favorite) thing about this time of year? Write a story about the lost...
This past summer, I spent quite a bit of time trying to decide what LD would do for 9th grade writing. Last year we used Cover Story and the kids continued doing a lot of independent writing. They also had to do some writing for history, but we hadn’t delved much into formal essay writing. It was time for LD to start writing more polished pieces, but I wasn’t quite...
The past couple of days, the kids have been writing their own Haikus during our writing workshop time. Your family might have fun with this too! What is a haiku? It is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. These seem simple as they are only three lines, but the kids found it to be tricky! A haiku has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5...
“Mom, I don’t know what to write!” Have you ever heard that in your homeschool? Today I have five ways you can help kids when they are feeling stuck with their writing. At the end of this post, you can download our 35+ page writing resource packet. It is currently FREE to download! Writing Tips: Writing Resource Packet We’ve been using a writing workshop for a couple of years now. ...
Today I have some writing practice pages to share with you about the concept, “Show Don’t Tell.” The kids and I are spending a number of days talking about this writing strategy. “Show Don’t Tell” helps the reader to experience the story by using descriptions, actions, thoughts, feelings, & emotions. Using this technique helps readers feel like they are right in the middle of the action! Here’s how I explained...
Check out the NEW Language Arts Tab! I have created a resource page with links to dozens of our language arts posts. We have all kinds of resources: Our free grammar pages have always been among the most visited pages on the blog. You’ll find links to our Comma Rules and Practice Pages Apostrophe and Quotation Mark Practice There/They’re/Their and Its/It’s Worksheets and many more!! We have at least 20...
Hi Everyone, This is going to be a bit of a random post so bear with me! I’m going to talk about 3 separate things in this post. 1) Our free calendar printable and homeschool planning pages 2) A free end of year questionnaire for students and parents and 3) a random chat about our Homeschool Writing Workshop. Free Calendar, Homeschool Planning Pages and Homeschool Supply List: First, as many...
How do you teach literary analysis to kids? Helping students study and analyze literature on a deeper level In our new Writing Workshop Unit this January we are going to go look at books more analytically. Some of our mini-lessons have included story structure (building to a climax, etc); finding topics to write about; looking at the opening of books (hooking the reader); using different techniques such as similes, metaphors,...
Language arts is a subject that is always in progress, so it doesn’t make quite as snazzy of a year in review wrap-up, but I thought this might be a good opportunity to share some of our free grammar resources again in a nice, organized table form since those still are so popular. The chart also includes links to our popular Homeschool Writing Workshop series. I’ve also included links to...
