It is hard to find good writing curriculum for your home school. There is a wealth of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and phonics workbooks out there to choose from, but teaching children to write is a greater challenge.It goes beyond memorization and recall to processing information and communicating that information clearly so that others can process it too! Yikes! Some children are naturally gifted at writing and others seem to hate it! But, all children can learn to write well!
Here are some curricula that I have used successfully to teach my own children to write and I recommend them to you!
1. Understanding Writing by Susan Bradrick (1-12 grade) Children learn to write excellent sentences, moving on to excellent paragraphs. Susan is an English major and homeschool mom. She knows what she is doing and gives moms step by step instructions to follow with their own children.
2. The Write Suff Adventure: Exploring the Art of Writing by Dean Rea, who is a retired newspaper editor and university teacher. He created this book for his homeschooled grandchildren and it’s wonderful. I have used this from fifth grade to twelfth grade with great success. It covers all kinds of writing: letters, jounaling, family history, news articles, and essays.
3. One Year Adventure Novel by Daniel Schwabauer, an award winning novelist and playwright, has created an amazing one year novel writing curriculum for high school students. Your children write an adventure novel–a heroic quest! The One Year Adventure Novel kit comes with a textbook, The Compass, a workbook, The Map, and a set of DVDs. I love the DVDs! The complete homeschool writing curriculum package includes The Compass, The Map, 7 DVDs, a teacher’s guide, and a copy of the novel, The Prisoner of Zenda. There is also a bonus DVD disk with 26 quizzes and 14 classic adventure novels (Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, The Blood Ship, Captain’s Courageous, Black Rock, Tarzan, Rupert of Hentzau, King Solomon’s Mines, Wulf the Saxon, Peter Pan and more). The cost is $199.00 for the entire package. You can order from their website: http://www.oneyearnovel.com
4. Imitation in Writing: Fairy Tales by Max Whitling. My kids loved this curriculum. They read a classic fairy tale and rewrite it in their own words. It was in reading one of Jimmy’s assignments using this curriculum that I discovered my son’s marvelous sense of humor.
How about you? What writing curricula have you used with success? I’d love to know!
Homeschooling with you!
Meredith Curtis
