Tagged: homeschool writing curriculum

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Writing Workshop Discussion Questions

At the beginning of the week, I thought it would helpful for the kids to think about some fundamental questions about writing… Why do we write? Why do we read? What makes for a good story? What makes a story interesting? What inspires you? What kinds of techniques can we use in our writing? What writing habits work best for you? And finally, I had the kids brainstorm alternative words for...

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Language Arts Homeschool Checklist

What skills do I want the kids to have in order to become successful writers?  For this post, I shared a list of some of the language and literary skills I want the kids to build in elementary and middle school.  These are topics and terms I want the kids to be familiar with.  As they get older I hope they are able to use and incorporate these naturally into their own...

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Writing Workshop: Conflict in Literature (Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, etc)

We absolutely love our homeschool writing workshop. We don’t use any special homeschool writing curriculum, instead we’ve designed a writing routine that works really well for us. (In fact my reluctant writer now really loves writing! More about that in How/Why we needed a change in our writing program!)  Today, I wanted to share a mini-lesson series I did with the kids on the literary device, conflict.  I learned these...

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Writing Workshop MiniLesson #6 – Alliteration and More

The writing workshop is more than just sitting down together and putting pencil to paper. This is also our time to learn about the writing process, to talk about different writing genres, and to  learn about different literary techniques.  During our writing workshop, we take the time to explore writing as a craft. About a year ago, I shared a number of writing workshop mini-lessons.  I wrote a series of...

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Back into the Routine – Writing Workshop Rules!

We had our first day back on Monday and it really went well.  The engineering activities I mentioned in the post on Monday morning were a HUGE hit and those activities will definitely be fun to share with you, but for right now I really wanted to write about our Writing Workshop. What I love and adore about our WW is that it virtually runs itself now. You would expect some...

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Writing Workshop: What We’re Doing for Writing This Fall

In this post, I wanted to talk about writing in our homeschool this fall.  Last year, we shifted to a writing workshop model.  I had a reluctant writer and up until that point, writing was a chore for my son.  Well, after switching to a writing workshop… writing became one of his favorite subjects! So, what do I mean by a writing workshop? In brief this means: We have a...

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Finding a Language Arts Curriculum (Writing, Grammar, etc.)

Welcome back to the our series on how to start homeschooling. During the past week, I have provided information about some of the homeschool curriculums available out there in the different subject areas. Today I wanted to share some of the writing and grammar programs available to homeschoolers. This is not an exhaustive list. You may want to order the (free)  Rainbow Resource Catalog, which is packed with homeschool reviews.  But these...

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Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons Day 5 (Exploring Memories)

This was one of the best mini lessons we’ve had on writing.  The kids still talk about how much they enjoyed sharing their memories and writing about them. They’ve asked me when we can do this again.  I call that a successful day! If you’ve missed the previous posts in this series, I would suggest you go back and start with them, though honestly, you can do any of these...

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Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons (Day 4–Story Openings)

Day 4: Story Openings–Set the mood or feeling of your story You’ve set up a good writing space, have your supplies – pencils, journals, resource materials. Now what?!! This is the second in a series of 5 posts with lesson ideas to help young writers get started on their writing journey. Be sure to read the introduction to this series in last Monday’s post, Day 1. Here are some of our first mini-lesson topics....

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Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons Day 2 – Make the Story Come Alive with Details

Writing Workshop Mini-Lesson #2: Make the Story Come Alive with  Details; Show the reader what happened; Create images in the reader’s mind You’ve set up a good writing space, have your supplies – pencils, journals, resource materials. Now what?!! This is the second in a series of 5 posts with lesson ideas to help young writers get started on their writing journey. Be sure to read the introduction to this series in last Monday’s...

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How do I Help the Kids to Start Writing?! 5 Lessons Ideas for the Writing Workshop (Day 1)

You’ve set up a good writing space, have your supplies – pencils, journals, resource materials. Now what?!! This is the first in a series of 5 posts with lesson ideas to help young writers get started on their writing journey. Introduction: Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons I have spent a lot of time writing about why we use a writing workshop, how we set up and structure our writing workshop, and even went into...

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Wonderful Free Writing Resource for Young Writers

I was so excited to come across the Young Writer’s Survival Kit by Melissa Forney. It has been an amazing resource for our writing workshop. UPDATE: Sorry to say, the resource below (Young Writer’s Survival Kit) is no longer available.  You might want to check out our Writing Resource Packet. It is currently free. At times when it’s writing time, I haven’t thought of a writing mini-lesson for the day....

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Free Writing Workshop Resource Pack (30-pages)

A couple of weeks ago, I started writing a series about how and why we started our own Homeschool Writing Workshop. This is the fourth post in the series. Since it’s been a while, let me link to the first few posts in the series Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #1: How and Why We Got Started with a Workshop Model. Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post...

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Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #3 (Mini-Lessons and Useful Resources)

In the first post in this series, I explained how we had dabbled in writing, but had never found a “program” or curriculum that worked well for us.  I found some expert advice from primary classroom teachers, though, and set about creating a workshop that works for our family. I learned about the 6+1 writing traits (the basic qualities that make writing work and include: ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence...