The Journey to Writing.

I have always enjoyed writing in some form or another. I started a diary when I was in the 5th grade and kept it up until 11th grade when I just got too busy to keep it! I loved to write stories and articles in high school also. So naturally I fell in love with blogging where I had the perfect venue to write out my thoughts and feelings and have it look relatively nice when I was done. Oh sure, sometimes my grammar and spelling is a bit sloppy, but overall it has been a very creative outlet.

Oh that my children would love writing too! We got off to a rocky start with our homeschooling when my son’s reading disability took up so much of my time and attention. When that was solved I found that I had developed the skills necessary to teach my children decoding, but that I had not fostered a love of words and a love of writing as expression. Over the last few years we have turned some of that around. My children now enjoy reading and they especially enjoy being read to. My little daughter loves to draw pictures and symbols, but she isn’t really writing yet. For the boys, writing is something they dread.

So last year, in preparation for high school, I enrolled my then 7th grader Sam in a writing class taught by a local woman just for homeschoolers. It was a disaster. With that avenue being permanently off limits to my family I have spent a lot of time over the past four months looking for other options.

On the 4RealLearning forums I heard about the Bravewriter System. I ordered the program and read through it. This sounded doable! It took the process of writing into smaller chunks and really made sense to me. Combining that with the Charlotte Mason method of copy work and dictation, my kids were getting to understand how to write and they are actually doing more writing instead of just workbook busy work.

For Sam who is now in 8th grade and entering high school next year, I felt that he needed a little more challenge and umpf! I just recently enrolled him in the Bravewriter on Line class, reading and writing on Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories! So far it has been a lot of fun just immersing ourselves in Kipling’s style. This week, Sam will start writing his own Just So Story!

What Sam has enjoyed in this class is being able to look at the work of the other students and compare himself to what he sees. He also gets to read all of the teacher’s suggestions which is very helpful. For a young writer who lacks confidence, these types of opportunities help to bolster his confidence as he sees that he is on the right track.

For me, I feel as though the class is teaching me to teach my child how to write. Hopefully I will gain some skills that I can pass on to my other children, and even learn some new tricks for myself!

Our current class runs until April. I’ll post some of his stories on my homeschool blog when they are completed. My overall goal is that Sam will not look at picking up his pen, or sitting down at the computer as a chore, but as an opportunity and maybe even fun!

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