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Choosing a Great Homeschool Writing Curriculum

Writing can be intimidating, both teaching it and practicing it (as in, actually doing the writing). Lots of questions probably float through your mind as you try to decide on a homeschool writing curriculum.

  • Where should I begin?
  • How can I inspire my children to enjoy writing?
  • What do my children need to know about writing?
Choosing a Great Homeschool Writing Curriculum

As a creative writer, I believe one of the most important parts of teaching the subject to my kids involves inspiring creativity in their own hearts and minds.

The thing is, children are naturally creative, and they’re natural storytellers, too! Have you ever returned to your kids after a few hours away, and they all want to tell you stories? Each one is jumping up and down wanting to narrate to you the events of the past few hours.

So, we know they can create stories, of all kinds, but the challenge is figuring out how to teach them the semantics of writing–transforming a creative oral story into a written one that makes sense and doesn’t neglect the vital aspects of proper grammar, punctuation, and flow.

This is where a great homeschool writing curriculum can make all the difference!

Writing Begins with Reading

I was into the whole early learning thing and taught my oldest to read at a young age. She was reading picture books at two, and by five she finished Little House in the Big Woods in a single afternoon. I couldn’t find enough books to satisfy her literary appetite.

A year or two later, she was weaving tales for her little brothers on car rides and writing fictional stories of her own. But having to deal with the more technical aspects of writing wasn’t her idea of fun. I needed a writing curriculum that would keep her engaged, yet also give her a solid foundation in writing mechanics.

Even if you don’t have an aspiring author in the house, your children will need to learn how to write research reports, informative and persuasive essays, effective memos, and letters and reports for business purposes.

All of these will need to contain sound writing mechanics such as the rules of punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, grammar, and spelling.

But it all starts with a love for reading and stories! If you have a reluctant reader, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with reading aloud to that little boy or girl. Some children (and adults, too) naturally prefer audio input.

homeschool writing curriculum

While it’s important to encourage those types of learners to do some reading for themselves, you can rest assured that hearing a story read aloud still helps them develop important skills. It enables them to grasp concepts like narrative arc, story flow, and character development. Listening to stories aloud also gives them a chance to utilize their imagination as they hear a story unfold.

Okay, back to writing.

What Are the Four Types of Writing?

In homeschooling, and in finding the best writing curriculum, you want to expose your children to the four types of writing, often enough that they understand these main approaches. The more they grow familiar with these, the easier it will be for your children to hone their writing skills.

  • Expository writing answers a question or provides information. It offers evidence and statistics and is often found in the genres of business writing, technical writing, and scientific writing.
  • Persuasive writing convinces the reader to take action or adopt a specific point of view. The writer must offer evidence and justification that support whatever claims they are making.
  • Descriptive writing uses words to paint a picture by utilizing sensory details that evoke imagery. Metaphors, similes, and allegories are literary techniques often used in descriptive writing.
  • Narrative writing tells a story, which can be fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. A narrative needs characters, a setting, and usually a conflict of some sort or tension that must be resolved. Good narrative writing also employs aspects of descriptive writing such as imagery, metaphors, and whatever other techniques are needed to strengthen the story.

How to Teach the Mechanics of Writing

Beyond learning about the four different types of writing, a good homeschool writing curriculum will also teach writing mechanics.

The mechanics of writing will include:

  • Learning the rules for capitalization
  • Memorizing the rules for punctuation
  • Understanding the various (and sometimes confusing) rules for spelling
  • Appropriate sentence structure and syntax
  • All things grammar-related

How to Teach the Writing Process

One last thing a great homeschool writing curriculum will cover is the writing process, which involves a series of steps to help writers organize their thoughts.

  1. Pre-writing – researching, brainstorming, and deciding what to write about.
  2. Organizing – putting ideas into logical order, and using a writing style that suits the target audience. This sometimes involves writing an outline (every child’s favorite task!).
  3. Rough Draft – putting thoughts and ideas into written format while not worrying too much about the finer points of grammar and punctuation.
  4. Revising – making improvements to content, structure, and style. This is where you as the teacher come in and offer suggestions (and hopefully a lot of encouragement, too).
  5. Editing – correcting errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
  6. Final Draft – putting the essay into final form (yes, this final draft is a necessary practice, even if they complain about having to write the same thing AGAIN!).

Questions When Choosing a Writing Curriculum

  1. Are you comfortable enough with the semantics of writing to teach your child about it? Would you prefer a program that takes the pressure off and enables you to focus on other aspects of homeschooling?
  2. What type of program will fit your child’s learning style? Are they better suited to workbooks? Would they prefer a video-based curriculum?
  3. Is your focus on inspiring creativity in your children, or helping them learn the mechanics of grammar? If you are more versed in one or the other, get a program that focuses on what you’re not as familiar with.
Choosing a Great Homeschool Writing Curriculum

    Homeschool Writing Curriculum Options

    Okay, now for the fun part! Here are 12 courses or writing curriculum options (and one writing app) available. Some are online, and some are workbooks. Some are video-based and some are text-based. Basically, there is something to fit every student, teacher, and homeschooling situation!

    • Write At Home offers online writing courses for students in fourth to twelfth grade. They also offer offer live, webinar-based, literature courses, high school history classes, and complete English Language Arts classes for fourth and fifth graders.
    • Institute for Excellence in Writing is a video-based program that aims to equip teachers and homeschooling parents with the methods and materials they need to train their students to grow into confident communicators and thinkers.
    • Brave Writer provides user-friendly materials and online classes for students of all ages, including family bundles, if you are teaching language arts to several ages at once.
    • Write Your Roots is a one-year workbook for grades 5-12, with short stories based on facts. It is designed to fulfill the requirements for a full year of English composition.
    • Learn to Write the Novel Way is a language arts and writing curriculum for grades 5-12, which teaches your students to write an entire novel, learning vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics skills they can use in their future writing.
    • Wordsmith Apprentice is an easy-to-use writing course that helps students develop their writing skills while they participate in various newspaper staff roles, including editor, reporter, and writer.
    • Igniting Your Writing is a homeschool writing curriculum in one volume with 24 lessons, covering six areas of writing. Each lesson has three levels, so you can choose the level that fits your student: startup, intermediate, or advanced. A teacher’s guide is also included.
    • Classical Writing is a writing curriculum that uses a method based on an ancient Greek writing tradition aimed to teach students the art of putting thoughts into words.  
    • Writing Strands is a writing composition series that teaches grammar via a convenient daily schedule of 30 to 45 minutes per lesson, five days a week
    • JacKris Publishing provide a variety of language arts curricula to parents and teacher who hope to strengthen their students’ mastery of spelling, vocabulary, English grammar, traditional writing, and creative writing techniques. They have workbooks on language arts, spelling, writing, grammar, and diagramming.  
    • The WriteWell Writing App offers helpful information about writing essays of all kinds, including narrative, persuasive, and expository essays, as well as personal narrative and memoir-style writing, literary analyses, and more.
    • Story Starters is part of The Gentle Art of LearningTM series, which encourages children to write in ways they have never written before.
    • One Year Adventure Novel is a one-year writing curriculum that teaches students how to write an adventure novel over the course of one school year. It teaches foundational principles of storytelling and provides many thought-provoking questions to help students create better stories.

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