From the Desk of WriteShop

How can you encourage your teen when he feels stuck?

What should you tell him when he can’t seem to get started writing?

What advice can you offer when perfectionism rears its ugly head and he has trouble accepting his own mistakes?

Typically, you can’t say or do much—especially if he’s already in a funk. But if you can bite your tongue and sit on your hands till a teaching moment arises, he might be willing to consider one of these ten truths.

1. It’s not just you. I promise.

Writing isn’t always easy. I’m sure you think you’re the only one who suffers from writer’s block, but it might help to know that even famous published authors will agonize over a word, a sentence, or a paragraph.

2. There’s no penalty for a bad first draft.

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” ~Robert Cromier

3. If you’re stuck, explain to someone what you’re trying to write.

My adult son is a former reluctant writer. But even to this day, as a Ph.D. student, he’ll call me from time to time when he hits a writing roadblock. Often, I do nothing more than listen and offer the occasional “Mm-hmm.” But the act of thinking aloud and tossing around ideas can open up the floodgate, and he finds that the log jam of words will finally loosen.

4. Set a timer.

Having trouble getting started? Grab a kitchen timer and set it for 15 minutes. You can do anything for 15 minutes, right? And some days, you may not even hear the beep.

5. To write well, it helps to read well.

Reading teaches you how words work. You can become more attuned to detail, imagery, voice, and sentence construction. There’s no guarantee that being an avid reader will automatically make you a polished writer, but reading certainly lays a foundation for writing in many ways.

6. Style comes with practice.

Writing may not be second nature to you, but you will learn to develop your own writing style over time.

7. It’s better to write poorly than not at all.

You can always improve your rough draft. Don’t get hung up on perfection. Everyone revises!

“The first rule of writing is to write. The second rule of writing is to rewrite. The third rule of writing is the same as the second.” ~Paul Raymond Martin

8. Don’t write and edit in the same sitting.

I can’t tell you how many little errors I catch when I revisit a piece of my own writing even one day later! I know it’s tempting to just “get it over with.” But really, you’re much wiser to let that essay marinate for a couple of days. When you come back to it, you’ll be more likely to see it with fresh eyes and be willing to make changes.

[Of course, this means you can't wait till the last minute to write your rough draft. 'Nuf said.]

9. Learn to edit your own work.

This is one of the most valuable writing skills you can acquire. The more adept you become at self-editing, the less you have to rely on others to point out flaws. Before you turn your paper over to your parent or teacher, proofread and revise it first.

• Am I being too wordy?
• Repeating myself?
• Making my point?
• Varying my sentence structure?
• Using descriptive detail?
• Punctuating properly?

Your writing will always benefit from a second set of eyes, but learning to edit your own work is a lifelong skill every student needs to develop. While you’ll never be completely objective about your own writing, the ability to self-edit is equally important as having another person do it for you.

10. Edit your writing as if it were someone else’s.

Take an emotional step away from your paper. Imagine that it was written by the kid who flips burgers at McDonald’s, and begin to look for ways the writing could improve. It’s much easier to be objective when you pretend that your composition isn’t actually yours!

Copyright 2012 © Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

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WriteShop  provides schedules, checklists, and detailed instructions that give teen writers direction and help them stay on task. Choosing WriteShop I and II will help you equip and inspire successful writers!

“The kids loved the Friendly Letter Boogie—that was a fun entertaining way to make the lesson stick. I still catch them doing it.” –Jennifer, NC

The early elementary years are the perfect time to introduce children to writing a friendly letter.

Part of writing a letter includes learning to format it properly. With all those headings and greetings and signatures, this can prove complicated for young children, who are still just learning about writing sentences and paragraphs.

That’s why mnemonics, songs, fingerplays, and motion activities are so valuable at this age—they reinforce trickier concepts, aid children in learning new skills, and help with recall.

Doin’ the “Friendly Letter Boogie”

Your children will enjoy this movement activity to help them remember the parts of a friendly letter.

Heading. At the very top of a friendly letter is the heading. The date goes here. Ask your child to pat her head to remember that the heading comes first.

Greeting. Second comes the greeting, such as “Dear Grandma.” Extend and shake hands to “greet” each other.

Body. Third is the body of the letter. Invite your child to wiggle her body to remember that the body of the letter comes next.

Closing. At the bottom of the letter is the closing, where she’ll write: “Love,” “Your friend,” or “Sincerely.” Tell your child to close her feet together for the closing.

Signature. To help your child remember to include her signature at the bottom of the letter, have her sign her name on the floor with her foot.

Isn’t this a fun way to practice and remember? Each day that you work on writing letters together, have your children do the Friendly Letter Boogie. In no time, they’ll have mastered the steps of formatting a basic letter!

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WriteShop Primary, an early-elementary writing curriculum for homeschoolers, is filled with games and activities such as the Friendly Letter Boogie—fun ways to help you introduce important skills to your youngest writers.

Photo credits: Karah Fredricks. Used by permission.

My name is Kim, and I’m a Pinterestaholic.

Well, maybe it’s not THAT serious, but I do love Pinterest. It’s simply the best way to keep online recipes, photos, tips, and craft ideas categorized—even the ones I think I’ll never actually get around to using!

In addition to pinning salad recipes, organizational tips, and ideas for a future kitchen remodel, I’ve been collecting writing ideas, too. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Paint Chip Contractions

Who knew you could have so much fun with paint chips? This Paint Chip Contractions activity will help your kids practice forming contractions.

2. Boggle

Isn’t this the most fun? It’s a Printable Boggle Board! Boggle makes an outstanding pre-writing game for all ages, from elementary through high school. It’s a great way to dust off the cobwebs and get ready for writing time.

3. Paint Chip Synonym Garden

Use colorful paint chips in graduated hues to make a Paint Chip Synonym Garden. It’s a hands-on vocabulary-building tool that keeps dull or repeated words at a minimum. This is ideal for middle-schoolers, but you can certainly use it with younger students as well.

4. Traffic Light Transitions

Make a Traffic Light Transitions poster. This terrific visual will remind children to use transition words to connect sentences and paragraphs.

5. Journal Jar

Journaling is another way to loosen stuck thoughts and ideas. Make this cute Journal Jar, which includes a link to colorful, printable topics you can cut out and add to the jar. Children will have fun picking out topics, whether you do daily, bi-weekly, or weekly journaling. For added fun, let them give input about what they’d like to write about!

6. Venn Diagrams

When teaching children to compare and contrast, a Venn diagram is a useful tool. And when you add a kinesthetic dimension for your hands-on learners, it’s even better! Here’s a Paper Plate Venn Diagram that’s been used to compare and contrast two different versions of “The Princess and the Pea.” You can really run with this idea in so many ways!

7. Writing a Strong Lead

Students of all ages can struggle with how to introduce a topic or start a story. I love this free printable poster I found through Pinterest: What Makes an Effective Lead?

8. Lists

I’ve long been an advocate of list-making, so I especially love this link to a great resource for printable lists, including book lists, lists of descriptive adjectives, and this list of strong verbs. Watch your children’s vocabulary soar!

Have you been bitten by the Pinterest bug? Leave your link in the comments and I’ll be happy to follow you!

Although it’s is one of the most necessary and helpful steps of the writing process, brainstorming can stump a reluctant writer—even if she’s using a worksheet, graphic organizer, or parent prompting.

You:    What comes to mind when you think of the beach?
Child: Sand and water.
You:    Great! What else?
Child: That’s all I can think of.

And that’s on a good day!

Prime the Pump

When students have a deep “well” of words and ideas from which to draw, their compositions becomes more vivid and concrete. That’s why WriteShop repeatedly emphasizes the need for adequate brainstorming as a routine part of the writing process. But if their well is dry and they can’t come up with enough words or ideas, their compositions will fall flat.

To keep ideas fresh and flowing, students need to prime their writing pumps on a regular basis. By practicing frequent brainstorming—especially when there’s no added pressure to write a composition—they’ll discover that they can think of words more quickly and abundantly. An activity like the Writing Well is a perfect training tool!

The Writing Well

The “Writing Well” is designed to stimulate vocabulary, ideas, and impressions on a particular topic. It makes a good pre-writing activity, but it’s really brainstorming practice in disguise!

Kept in a small notebook, these brainstorming results can also become a “seed book”—a resource, word bank, or collection of ideas—when writing future compositions.

Student Directions

1. You will find it helpful to keep your “Writing Well” in a spiral notebook for easy reference.
2. Use a separate page for each topic. You may use both front and back if you wish.
3. Before beginning, choose a topic and write it at the top of the page. Then set the timer to write for five full minutes.
4. The purpose of this exercise is to write down all the words, phrases, or sentences that come to mind about your chosen topic within the five minutes allotted.

If you get stuck, try some of these ideas:

• Picture the topic in your mind. Use your five senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell—to describe details.
• Ask yourself questions about the subject matter—who? what? when? where? why? how?
• Use a photograph or magazine picture to jog your thoughts.

At first this activity may seem difficult. You may wonder: How can I write about one thing for five whole minutes? Relax! Over time you’ll find that it has become more natural to transfer ideas from your head to your paper.

Some of these exercises will lend themselves to becoming compositions. Put a colorful star at the top of the page if you might like to develop this into a paragraph or story in the future.

Parent Tips

In the beginning, your child may have trouble writing for five full minutes. Perhaps you could set the timer for three minutes, then increase it to four, and finally to five over the course of several weeks.

If your student brainstorms very generally about a topic, you might suggest next time that she narrow her topic even further. For example, if she writes on the topic of animals, she’ll probably include a list of many kinds of animals. Next time, have her select just one of those animals (such as dogs, monkeys, or whales) and make a “Writing Well” for that subtopic, including as many details as she can.

Should your student repeatedly make lists of words only, challenge her to begin writing descriptive phrases, too. Sometimes these will be factual and sometimes experiential. For example:

If she’s writing about “red,” words and phrases might include:

• ketchup
• stop signs
• making Valentines for my family
• embers glowing in the fireplace
• fire engines
• Dorothy’s ruby slippers
• the crimson sunset on our vacation in California  

If she’s writing about Grandma, phrases might include:

• baking chocolate cookies together
• lives in an apartment in Miami
• smells sweet like roses
• takes a ceramics class in her clubhouse
• silver hair
• favorite color is pink

The random list of ”red” words and phrases probably won’t ever be developed into a paragraph. On the other hand, the “Grandma” list definitely has potential to become a great descriptive composition at some point.

Writing Well Topics

Are you ready? Dip your ladle deep into the Writing Well and pull up a full, soaking draught of words and ideas. Then spill them over a fresh page—and let the writing begin. Here are some topics to get you started!

• a famous place I would like to visit
• my dream car
• gardens
• books
• animals (farm animals, jungle creatures, pets, birds, insects)
• birthdays
• the beach
• fishing
• obeying
• snow
• sounds that make me happy (nervous, afraid)
• my childhood toys
• my favorite meal
• my grandpa (or other family member)
• our pantry
• Saturdays
• things I like about myself
• heaven
• the color blue (orange, yellow, gray, green)
• things that make me feel cozy
• new uses for duct tape
• If cars could fly…
• If I had to live underwater…

Copyright © 2012 Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

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“The Writing Well” is one of the supplemental writing activities tucked into the appendix of the Teacher’s Manual for WriteShop I and II.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr. Other photos courtesy of stock.xchg. Used with permission.

When I was a young homeschool mom (back in the days of dinosaurs, and just before the Model T and home computers), I had limited sources for support and resources:

1. A close-knit circle of homeschooling friends
2. My homeschool support group
3. Our annual homeschool convention
4. A small handful of local curriculum stores and catalog companies
5. The public library

Today’s homeschoolers have so much more at their disposal! With the advent of the Internet, the world has become a smaller place. Now, with the click of a mouse or the swipe of a finger, homeschool moms can access articles, experts, discussion forums, online stores, virtual conventions, product reviews, e-books, apps, and printable downloads.

And blogs. Blog upon wonderful blog.

There’s really nothing quite like the homeschool blogging community, “which puts so much inspiration and so many great ideas right at your fingertips, without ever leaving the comfort of your home.” ~Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

The homeschool-mom blogosphere has exploded.

Not only are there tons of amazing blogs, both established and emerging, there are now blogging conferences such as Relevant and the 2:1 Conference.

These conferences refresh, inspire, challenge, and equip women to become more successful bloggers as they tell their stories and share their journeys, lives, and faith.

Though next month marks the 4th anniversary of my own blog—In Our Write Minds, I’m excited to dip my toes in some new water as WriteShop helps sponsor three sweet bloggers who will be attending the 2:1 Conference in April.

Want to meet them?

Maureen of Spell Outloud homeschools her six children. I love her blog! It’s loaded with ideas and projects, free printables, helpful articles, loads of activities for preschoolers, and curriculum reviews and giveaways.

Stephanie blogs at Bowmania. She’s mama to five kiddos, including a new baby. She blogs about family, homeschooling, and life in the trenches (her family lost their house to a fire last year). Stephanie also does book reviews and giveaways.

You’ll find Shay blogging at Wonderfully Chaotic. A mom of two with diverse talents and interests that range from homeschooling to home birthing, Shay writes with refreshing honesty.

Please visit their blogs! I pray that the 2:1 Conference meets each of these women in a specific and fresh way. I’m excited to watch them continue to grow as writers, and I know I’ll learn a thing or two from them as well.

~Kim

Twelve Days of Christmas

December 26, 2011 through January 6, 2012 mark the Twelve Days of Christmas. Celebrate with us by receiving a gift for the season!

WriteShop is partnering with Homeschooling Today magazine to bring you a special gift on December 31, the Sixth Day of Christmas.

I can’t tell you what the gift is (don’t you love surprises?), but I can tell you that it’s something brand-new, and I promise you’ll be thrilled. Plus, we’re throwing in a terrific WriteShop discount coupon too.

How to Get Your Gifts

Go to www.HomeschoolingToday.com now to sign up on the home page for the Homeschooling Helper e-newsletter to receive our offer on the above date.

Homeschooling Today will send a special discount or gift from a different vendor each day of the Twelve Days of Christmas – that’s 12 different goodies — but only to their readers. Get your new year off right! Sign up now so you don’t miss a single one of these special offers.

And if you’re unfamiliar with the traditions of the Twelve Days of Christmas, check out Marilyn Rockett’s excellent article. It will help you make sense of what “four calling birds,” “six geese a-laying,” and “eight maids a-milking” really mean.

Wishing you the richest blessings of the season,
Kim

Write Christmas Stories with a Twist!

What’s this? A ragged fir tree helps a stranger on a cold night? A weary homeless man discovers a wallet full of money outside a bakery? A bad-tempered candy maker finds a magic candy cane and disappears into a snow globe?

What kid wouldn’t love to write a holiday story filled with such hope, whimsy, or intrigue?

Award-winning WriteShop StoryBuilders card decks help to jumpstart a creative writing project by providing children with the basic elements of a story—character, character trait, setting, and plot—laying a foundation for a joyful writing experience with some clever surprises thrown in along the way.

During the holidays, use the Christmas Mini-Builder to occupy bored or antsy kids and teens with these fun writing prompts. You get 96 cards to download and print, along with lots of suggestions for writing games and activities.

A Mom’s Story

But don’t just take it from me! Here’s a snippet from an email I got just this morning!

I just wanted to write a quick thank-you note for the Christmas Mini-Builder! My daughter, who is 11, is dyslexic and she tends to write as little as she can get away with when assigned a task. I printed out the story cards today and let her loose and she has written three short stories so far — and it’s only 8:20 a.m.! ~Erin

Christmas Mini-Builder Is on Sale!

Save 25%! Now through December 15, the Christmas Mini-Builder is only $2.95, so grab yours now!

Hoping someone will buy that extra “e” so we can fix this thing.

Photo © 2008 by tvindy. Used with permission.

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Stop by every 1st, 3rd, and 5th Wednesday for a peek into the world of spelling, punctuation, or grammar gone wrong!

As holiday decorations come out and the tree or menorah takes center stage, children can become increasingly distracted, sidetracked, and fidgety in anticipation of upcoming seasonal celebrations.

Homeschooling doesn’t need to fall by the wayside during December! The holidays can be a great time to assign writing activities that focus on the festivities, allowing children to immerse themselves in the fun while encouraging productivity. This month, have your kids write a paragraph describing a holiday-themed process where they explain, in a step-by-step manner, how something is done.

Process Paragraph: Choosing a Topic

Help them pick a process that isn’t too involved or complicated. With younger or reluctant writers, it’s especially important to keep the number of steps to a minimum. Also, the more familiar children are with the process, the easier it will be to write about it.

Here are some ideas to get them started. They can explain how to:

• Wrap a present
• Make latkes
• Decorate the tree
• Bake gingerbread cookies
• Build a snowman
• Be a “Secret Santa”
• Set the table for dinner
• Create a handmade greeting card
• Make a holiday craft project
• Play the dreidel game
• String popcorn
• Make a paper “countdown” chain

Process Paragraph: Writing the Rough Draft

Once your kids have chosen a topic (and narrowed it down to a specific task, if necessary), walk them through a few simple steps to guide and direct them.

1. If possible, have them go through the process themselves before beginning to write. Take digital photos of them as they complete each step.
2. Provide a graphic organizer to help them break down the steps of the process and plan the composition. Here’s a simple one that’s especially good for elementary ages. Here’s one can be filled in on the computer. Or download a free lesson sample from WriteShop I (grades 6+) that includes a Process Planning Worksheet.
3. Next, have them begin to write the rough draft, explaining the most important steps first.
4. Teach them to use transition words such as first, second, third, next, then, finally, or last.
5. If the paper isn’t too long, or if the steps are too vague, they can expand each step by adding sub-steps, more detail, or colorful description.

Process Paragraph: Making an Instruction Manual

Edit the rough draft together to ensure the steps are logical and easy to follow, and check for spelling and punctuation errors.

To publish their how-to composition in a fun way, have your children create an instruction manual. Here’s how:

1. Invite them to choose the photos they want to use to illustrate the process. They will need to print out 4-6 pictures. Let them tape or glue each picture to the top half of a sheet of notebook paper, using a separate sheet for each photo.
2. Next, have them copy their corrected composition onto the sheets of notebook paper, writing the sentence or sentences that each photo illustrates.
3. Finally, encourage them to design and decorate a colorful cover, including a catchy title. Assemble the instruction manual and share with family members.

Activities like this will keep your children happily writing, even during the busiest time of year!

Copyright © 2010 Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr.

Lately, I’ve seen lots of tips for using common household products such as baking soda, car wax, baby oil, and dryer sheets. Vinegar makes a great window cleaner. Mayonnaise can remove water rings from furniture. But I’ll admit it never occurred to me to use coleslaw as a laundry aid. So glad I saw this “qualifcation”!

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Stop by every 1st, 3rd, and 5th Wednesday for a peek into the world of spelling, punctuation, or grammar gone wrong!