Tagged: homeschool writing workshop
“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. ...
Have your kids read the Plot Chicken? We started our Writing Workshop off with this book. What a great buk, buk!! In fact, I liked it so much that I created a chicken writing rules printable to go along with the book (free to download down below)!!! So, in this post I want to share some of our Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons about the Story Writing Process & Story Structure. The...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
Yesterday I mentioned that we read the Sneetches (while talking about some of the lessons about the Civil Rights Movement: Civil Rights Movement Lessons – Prejudice Stereotypes Groups and More). We talked for a long time about how it feels to be left out. We talked about fitting in and sometimes how it’s hurtful not to wear the right thing or look the right way. I told the kids a...
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...
Getting the Writing Workshop Area Ready One of the things that jumped out for me from all the reading I was doing about writing workshops is that it is important to have a space, routine and materials completely ready to go. We had always fit in writing pell-mell whenever it fit in to our homeschool day. I wanted there to be a designated space (both physically and mentally) for our...
For the past six months, I’ve been alluding to the fact that we have really changed the way we approach writing. Part of me has been wanting to write a post for ages, but I just wasn’t quite sure where to start. Time to jump in! First, a little background. LD has always been a reluctant writer. When he was K-1, we worked a lot on handwriting and copywork. We...