Writing Week!

We are spending this week, concentrating on writing. We are looking at it’s many forms and uses and having lots of fun playing around with our own writing.

I often leave a morning challenge out for the girls to get on with first thing in the morning. This is a wonderful way to get them engaged when they first wake up and to evoke some enthusiasm for the current topic and to give them a wonderful sense of achievement when they have completed something before breakfast! Also, and rather cunningly, it gives them a task to get on with if they rise earlier than me and sometimes gives me another half hour’s sleep!

For their morning challenge on the first day of our writing unit I left them a host of different writing prompts to look at and hopefully find inspiration from. K loves reading and devours books in huge numbers, but she struggles with inspiration to come up with her own topics to write about. I left her two pages of ideas from which she picked a couple and got on with some creative writing before 9am.

Writing Prompts

When J was still in school, just over a year ago, I was consistently told that she was not reaching her full potential and that she should be doing more writing. Her teachers complained that she often did the minimum required with a writing task and quickly moved on to a play based activity. I have since discovered that school was right, she is capable of a lot more than she produced at school but not because she is lazy, she was just uninspired. She is a little fussy but, when she finds something that grabs her she is wonderful and will happily produce much more work than is needed. So my challenge is to find new ways to engage her.

I have given them the freedom to choose anything they want to write about, in any way they wish. I worried that giving them this freedom might lead to unfocussed messing about, but on the contrary it worked well! K chose to do a lapbook on Herpetology – a big project that should take a few days to complete. J started by drawing some pictures and then used it as inspiration to write a story – about a duck who likes libraries, reads a book that hypnotises him into not liking libraries any more, and is then cured by his daughter and the king by a potion made of honey. She then stood and read it aloud for us all to hear.

I loved it!

The Hypnotised Duck…

All readings should be conducted while wearing a leotard and lit by a lava lamp.

Last Bits of Anatomy

I had hoped to be able to finish off our project on the human body last week, after a fortnight studying the unit. But we had a busy week with lots of trips out and I have just had to accept that sometimes life doesn’t fit into nice round week-long units! It’s a reflection on me and the way my head works that I feel the need to make things fit like this, and a wonderful part of Home Education that means that it doesn’t have to. We can be flexible and change things whenever we feel it is right. I’m trying to embrace this, even if it does go against my grain of putting things into timetables!

The Internal Organs

Working Hard

To complete the unit we have put the finishing touches to our body model, who is looking rather fabulous hanging on the living room door. Both girls also completed a lap book. J’s was a fabulous freebie from Homeschooling In Heels – thank you so much for this wonderful resource! K wanted to do a different project to her sister, so I found a HUGE selection of resources and information aimed at slightly older girls at Homeschool Share. This lapbook is based on an American book aimed at pre-teen girls, The Care and Keeping of You. We are in the UK and, although I could probably get a copy if I hunted high and low, decided that much of the information could be found elsewhere using resources I already had to hand. Both girls worked hard on their projects and learned a few new things along the way!

J’s Finished Lapbook

J’s Finished Lapbook

K’s HUGE Lapbook!