Homeschooling Days: The Family Journal & Writing

by Valorie Delp | More from this Blogger

09 Oct 2006 06:15 PM

Welcome to the second blog in our series Homeschooling Days. We're talking about different activities in our days that we add to make home schooling more exciting, or rewarding for our kids. This is the place for our brilliant teaching strategies and I just want to remind everyone to feel free to add their insight to our forum. Today, we'll talk about ways to inspire our creative writers.

Ways to Kill the Desire to Write

I find it hard to talk about ways to encourage budding writers without talking about what discourages them. One sure fire way to squash the desire to write is to correct all the mistakes. Don't get me wrong. I fully recognize that one cannot be a good writer without knowing how to spell, and without having a good command of grammar. However, as much as writing is a process, so is becoming a good writer.

The second way I know of to stifle creativity and impede good writing skills is to have kids write mundane things. Stick only to book reports and summaries of what they've read and you will surely turn out a student who hates writing.

The Family Journal

This is my favorite way to teach my kids good writing skills and thus far I have found it to be the most effective. The Family Journal is a common journal in which everyone is able to write and participate in an ongoing conversation. What's so great about the family journal is the way mistakes are corrected--through modeling rather than through a red ink pen!

My daughter recently wrote this: "mom when are we going to Connecticut"

So I responded: We are going to Connecticut in a few weeks. You must be excited. What do you want to do there?

Lizzy: "I want to go see my cuzins."

Me: I'm sure your cousins will be thrilled to see you.

I have corrected her without telling her she's wrong. In this case, it doesn't impede the conversation and so she's able to continue writing and subtly you see changes in what she does. I must admit that I started this to just have a means to talk about her feelings with all the recent changes. However, it has become a wonderful educational tool.

Field Trip Responses

One thing we do after field trips is have our kids either write a travel brochure boasting the advantages of coming to that particular location or a newspaper article about something that happened during the day. It allows us to see if they've learned anything and it gives them a little bit of a creative outlet.

What are your great ideas for teaching writing? What are the challenges in teaching writing?

Related Articles:

Homeschooling Days: Reading

Writing Activities for the Reluctant Writer

Learn more about Valorie Delp

Hello everybody! My name is Valorie and I am one busy lady! When I'm not writing or editing for families, I am busy trying to get my brood of 5 in line.

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Megan Bayliss (3586) 09 Oct 2006 06:23 PM

Is there a homeschooling site where kids can post their book reviews, excurion excitments, things about them, etc?

My son has a lot of difficulty writing and it has been suggested that we throw the pencils away and allow him to word process everything. He's a dab hand on the keyboard and a site as suggested may just encourage active participation from him.

Is anything available or should I be designing a site - I would include a word a week too, just like adults get when they subscribe to dictionary.com?????

Valorie Delp (49340) 09 Oct 2006 07:22 PM

That's an absolutely great idea for your son. A site. . .a site. . .I can look into it some more but here are a few thoughts to get you started:

www.freewebs.com would allow him to create his own webpage. Super easy to use and it has a blog feature so he could write a blog. Or you could create the web page and invite people?

www.bookadventure.org I am pretty sure they let you post book reviews here. It also has an incentive plan (you can create your own instead of using theirs) for the books you read.

I know some people use geocities for this purpose but that does not thrill me because of privacy issues. Let me think some more and I'll get back to you. . .

JacksonTN (51) 09 Oct 2006 08:47 PM

I have a homeschool high schooler and I have found a way to tap into her creative writing. I have her write a well known story from a different character's perspective. For instance, I had her redo the Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch's perspective. Granted, I didn't expect her to write a novel, just eight to ten pages. She loves doing things like that.

Valorie Delp (49340) 10 Oct 2006 04:37 AM

What a great idea! I am going to post that on the forum if you don't beat me to it. I have little kids--ages 7, 5, 3 and 16 mo twins. So we're not quite there yet. We're still working on spelling, writing sentences and paragraphs, etc. But absolutely great idea. (And that teacher said only "real teachers" knew teaching methods. Hmph).

Nola Redd (7081) 25 Nov 2006 08:39 PM

Another basic writing site is www.writing.com. That depends on how old your kids are, but he can get feedback. I would include a preface of some sort regarding age/grade level as some of the feedback-leavers can be overly strict on grammar, etc, while others (it is an open site) can just be cruel (ie why dont u laern to spell). But he can get 'nonMommy' feedback, which may or may not be beneficial. They have several paid memberships, but also a free one.

Valorie, loved the family journal! I'm off to find an available notebook now!

Valorie Delp (49340) 26 Nov 2006 05:09 AM

Thanks Nola!