Stories from a Budding Writer: The Bear and the Bee

A note from the author: The yellow highlight is because it's the bee speaking and since bees make honey, their speech should be yellow. 

Enjoy!

Schoolhouse Review Crew: Fortuigence Persuasive Essay Writing

In our last church in Maryland we had a more experienced homeschooling father who mentioned once that a weakness he had seen in homeschooled children was an ability to write well. I must admit that writing is a less-observed area in our home program as well. So I frequently request to do reviews of writing programs to try out when The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew offers them. This time, I had the benefit of trying out Fortuigence's Essay Rock Star Persuasive Essay Writing Course.
From the "at home" perspective, the temptation is to think, I never write 'book reports' as an adult, so why would I need to make my kid learn to write one in school? The ability to write well is one that we use frequently as adults though, and many of us could do a little better, especially in the days of technology, social media, texting, abbreviations, and so on. Maestro is in high school now and this is definitely a box we want to make sure gets extra emphasis for a while until we pass the "I hate writing" stage and move into at least grudging acceptance.

Schoolhouse Review Crew: IEW Fix It Grammar

For the first time in our homeschooling lives, our family had to do standardized tests this year. We decided to use the results as a way to determine weak spots in the boys and to guide us in our teaching efforts this year. Each of them were weak in grammar and rules of writing, so the chance to review Institute for Excellence in Writing Fix It! Grammar - The Nose Tree (book 1) teacher's manual  and the companion student book was an excellent way to begin our September schedule. 

This program had a lot of positives to start with. First, it comes from a company that is known for its excellent programs in the finer points of writing. The books are spiral-bound, so they lay flat while the kids are working, and the lessons are designed to take only fifteen minutes a day! Now, we used these first-level books for each of our oldest four children - ages 14 down to 5. They are geared towards grades 3-5. 

Homeschool Review: Essentials in Writing - Grade 7

Writing... an essential skill frequently overlooked in homeschooling circles. Just as Jeff and I were reviewing the skills we might need to revisit with the Gang, the chance to review the Essentials in Writing course popped up, so I jumped at it.

Some of our children write eagerly and often, while others have been more reluctant. I thought we had mastered the basics quite some time back  - and while we covered many of the technical aspects, there were some I seem to have missed. One of the blessings of teaching ones own children is sometimes getting a do-over!

Essentials in Writing is a program that comes with four DVDs. Three are instructional and one has all of the worksheets to print off for practice with the lessons of the day. As a money-saving feature, the fourth DVD, with the worksheets, will be sent as a downloadable PDF in the future, or for $20 you can purchase the sheets already printed out to save ink and time. There are courses for every grade level from K-12. We used the grade-7 course, I had both 13-year-old Maestro (avid, early reader, reluctant writer) and 11-year-old Chef (later to read, writes constantly) work on the course together.

Each video clip was about 15 minutes long and very simple - the lessons took one piece of the writing puzzle and covered it in detail. The worksheets usually included a one-page overview of the lesson that day and two or three pages of practice exercises of about 20 - 25 problems each. The amount of writing increased, of course, as the boys went further into the class, but the early exercises alternated between the underline/circle-the-answer variety and the write-out-the-sentence variety.

The boys liked the program well enough but felt like the instructor talked as he would to a younger audience - like a Mr. Rogers clip perhaps, asking a question then waiting for a "response." That irritated them a bit; I assumed he was teaching in front of an actual class even while filming, and it didn't bother me in the same way, but I could see Maestro's point.

What I noticed was that they were getting it: a few days ago, I was reviewing a story Chef is working on and mentioned something about the sentence being incomplete and I used the wrong term and called it an independent clause or something. Chef was able to tell me the correct term and how it should be used and the finer points of the lesson it came from.

What all that says to me is, irritating (to the kids) or no, the lessons are successful and worth turning the TV (or computer) on for - so though we are not yet finished with the course, the lessons are here to stay - and at $40, it's a good deal!

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