Today, I will tell you about the things Cati and Matteo do for writing.
I combine Cati and Matteo in writing. They are not at the same skill level, but the things they do during the week are easily adaptable for each.
On Mondays, we do a lesson from the book
No More, I'm Done! This is a book about creative writing. Before this year, I did not include creative writing as part of our school day. The kids would occasionally write something in their free time, but I did not see it as important enough to take up school time. I think part of the reason for this was that I personally hated any kind of creative writing assignment in school. I found it to be torturous. In middle school, we had to write our own poem set to the music of a nursery rhyme and sing it for the class!!! And the teacher thought she made up for this outrage by putting a sticker at the top of my paper! In high school, my favorite teacher committed what I viewed as an unforgivable sin by inviting one of the English teachers up to the science building in an attempt to weave together science and creative writing. One day, we were told to write a poem about chemistry! I refused. In college, I was dumbfounded when a friend actually chose to take a Creative Writing course in college - voluntarily! You get the picture - I don't do creative writing. So, early in my homeschooling days, when reading from an "expert" that creative writing was unnecessary, I sighed a huge sigh of relief and never thought about it again. However, I had read that some homeschooling moms did include it in their days, and I noticed that my kids enjoyed creative writing on their own. I started to see some value to creative writing - it is an opportunity to teach some important things about writing that will one day be needed in academic writing (word choice, organization, sentence structure, sentence variety, etc.) while being "fun" for the kids.
Hearing good things about the book
No More, I'm Done! and then reading it myself let me understand how to teach creative writing with all the benefits without making it a burden on the kids. Perhaps if I had been taught creative writing as it is taught in this book, then maybe I would have grown up enjoying it. On Mondays, we do a short lesson in this book, which usually includes looking at some element of writing in children's literature, and then Cati and Matteo are free to go write. They get to choose their topic. There's not a certain word count they are trying to achieve. They just get to enjoy their time playing with writing, and then we look at what they did together. Sometimes we will write a story together. It's a relaxed time and they really enjoy it - and I do, too!
On Tuesdays, Cati and Matteo write narrations from Writing with Ease. Matteo is in book 2 and Cati is in book 4. A narration is a retelling of what you have read. I believe it is important to be able to read something and then give a summary including the important parts of the story without getting bogged down in the details. They generally enjoy this because they have to read a snippet of a children's novel that piques their interest in finding out what happens next. They often decide to later read the whole book that the passage was taken from. Writing with Ease includes lessons on copywork and dictation, but we only do the narrations since we cover these other skills at other times.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the three of us together work through Fix-it Grammar by IEW. This program goes through one story over a year finding errors in punctuation and grammar and also looking for interesting sentence structure and word choice. Depending on how much time we have, we sometimes parse and diagram a sentence or two also. The stories for editing come as a PDF download, so we edit them together using the Notability app on my iPad. I'm impressed at how good Cati is at finding errors now, and Matteo is picking up on it, too. I try to let him find errors first so that he can catch the easier ones. I often give them correct copies of the sentences as copywork later in the day for handwriting practice.
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| A screenshot of some Fix-it Grammar work. |
On Friday, Cati parses and diagrams a sentence from Analytical Grammar's Review and Reinforcement book. We do our most intense grammar work in the summers using Analytical Grammar. I love this program!! It's concise. It's to the point. There's no time wasted on cutesy stuff. This becomes their major work over the summer (about 45-60 min/day) and then they use the review book once a week during the school year. This frees up time during the school year for other things, like writing! Matteo doesn't use this yet. It is such as intense curriculum that its not recommended to start it before 4th grade. Matteo might work through the Jr. Analytical Grammar book next summer or next school year. I haven't decided yet. He has done some other grammar, but this school year he is just reviewing grammar through our discussions of Fix-it Grammar.
Well, that's a pretty good overview of what we've been doing in writing this school year. I'm very pleased with how it's all going. We're all really enjoying the variety and the time working together!
And, speaking of writing, I have been forgetting to post NaNoWriMo word count updates! The success they are having with this is truly amazing to me. It is a great example of how much they are enjoying writing this year! They have only 8 more writing days left before the end of the month.
Maria - 9970 / 12,000 words
Cati - 3718 / 5000 words
Matteo - 1080 / 1000 words Yes! Matteo made his word count!! And he's still writing!
Today is November 30th! That marks the official end of NaNoWriMo which all 3 kids successfully completed! AND is marks the end of my month of daily blogging! I posted on 29/30 days - not bad :). Now I have to decide on a plan to continue blogging. I know my family really appreciates the pictures and updates of the kids, so that keeps me motivated. And the ease of this blogging app makes it practical! 
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