If you have been looking for homeschool writing tips of any kind, you have come to the right place! I have been so excited to start this series. I call it our “Homeschool Writing Experiment,” because it’s been a revolving process this school year. For the first two years of homeschooling, I couldn’t find a “perfect fit” writing curriculum.

You may have read a few of my children’s-book-related curriculum reviews recently; we are big readers in my house. Reading and Writing go hand in hand, BUT, my kids have not been overly enthusiastic about any of the typical writing projects revolving around books yet. Despite various book report options for our reading endeavors, the typical book-response type assignments just were not engaging them well. Has this ever happened to you? I think most homeschool parents would agree–having a school subject become burdensome can be discouraging for everyone.

I am currently homeschooling three of our four kids: a 4th grader, 2nd grader, and preschooler. In previous years, I have tried various writing prompt books with my eldest. I wanted him writing every day–even just a little bit. I tried using a simple book of writing prompts, and my plan was to use one each day. They were simple prompts, that required a 3-5 sentence response, like: “If you had $100, how would you spend it?” and “What is something you feel is unfair? Explain why.”

For some reason, my son just didn’t bite. He didn’t enjoy the prompts, and it became drudgery. It was frustrating, and for awhile I sort of gave up. We were already doing some of the more “dry” grammar work (Fix It Grammar Level 2 to prepare for IEW this year, as well as this grammar book) so I knew he was still catching the fundamentals. Still–I felt discouraged. I enjoy writing so much, and I wanted him to, too! So, I went on the hunt for some homeschool writing tips.

Researching homeschool writing tips

We finished out the school year (last year) and I took a break until mid-summer. Then, when I had a bit more time to explore other options, I hunkered down and did some research. First, I had to figure out what I wanted! I scoured the internet for curriculum, blogs, and any kind of homeschool writing tips I could find. I looked at state standards for writing, for both of my kids’ upcoming grade levels (2nd and 4th) to plan ahead for this current school year. I also thought back to fun writing projects I remembered doing as an elementary student.

The Grand Plan

After a few months of summer research, I made a plan. I decided to try sampling multiple writing genres this year, and see how that went. It was a shot in the dark, but it has turned out INCREDIBLE. I cannot wait to share each genre with you in this blog series! I’m hoping to blog about each genre, and share my favorite processes, methods, materials and freebies I utilized to make each genre successful. My goal is to provide ideas, and easy-to-implement writing lessons that you can replicate with your own kids, especially across multiple grade levels.

I began planning the sorts of genres I wanted to try, and began logging them into a Google Spreadsheet for the upcoming fall. As the school year began and I prepared to embark on this new Writing Experiment journey, I did a bit more reflecting.

As I prepared my new writing plan for this current school year, I also reflected on some of my non-negotiables for the best learning environment.

Writing Non-Negotiables:

So-there I was, raring to go at the beginning of the school year. I knew I wanted to teach my kids writing to the best of my ability. I knew that even with a “perfect plan” for what I wanted to cover, it wouldn’t be successful if I wasn’t mindful of the non-negotiables that make our homeschool run smoothly. Here is a list of non-negotiables that I came up with, that I knew made every subject in our homeschool, successful. These homeschool writing tips don’t just apply to writing, they apply to every subject!

–Relationship: One of the best perks of homeschooling is the quality time spent with your kids: reading, conversing, problem-solving, and learning together. I knew my kids would want to do writing with me, in some capacity. I didn’t want to just send them to their room and say “go do this writing assignment!” They learn and grow much more authentically if I learn alongside them. There is nuance to this, of course–especially if you have younger kids (I do!) but, I knew it was my ideal.

–Collaborative effort: similar to relationship, I knew that writing had to be a collaborative effort. It was important to me that my kids wrote in their own words, but, I knew I wanted to teach them some main concepts in a mini-lesson, for each new genre! My main structure for this was three steps. Check out this tandem post for more detail on how to keep learning collaborative, especially when you are teaching multiple grade levels at once!

–Consistency: This is one of the most basic, and yet helpful, homeschool writing tips. Writing begets writing. If possible, I wanted to implement writing into homeschool on a daily basis. Nothing intense or laborious–but definitely a consistent practice, and expectation. We have consistently done writing almost every day this year. Sometimes it is short and sweet–maybe 10 minutes to complete a simple step towards our goal. Other times (especially if baby sister was napping), it was an extended 30-45 minute writing session where we could go over lots of detail!

–Variety: I knew I wanted to expose them to a variety of genres and types of writing. When most of us think of writing in school, we may think of writing stories, or writing essays. These are important forms of writing–but there is so much variety out there! This year we have done writing in the form of a restaurant review, a tutorial, an interview, and many other genres! In this series, I will feature each type, so that you get an in-depth view of how we approached each of these genres.

–Living Books: Lastly, I knew I wanted to include living books. “Living books” is a Charlotte Mason term that describes an engaging children’s book, written by one author, and focusing on one main topic, rather than a dry textbook written by a committee. We have an expansive public library system where we live, so I have been so thankful to be able to find a massive variety of living books that pertain to any subject I am teaching!

A few favorites I have used to teaching writing concepts this year are: Quick As A Cricket by Audrey Wood and Skin Like Milk, Hair of Silk by Brian Cleary to teach similes and metaphors. (If your kids think grammar is dry or boring, like most kids, Brian Cleary has a whole series on almost every part of speech, and they are fabulous!) I also love Stegothesaurus by Bridget Heos, for alliteration and synonyms, and The King Who Rained by Fred Gwynne, for homonyms and word play.

Living books tend to give a nice introduction to concepts that can otherwise be boring!

–Make it fun & personalized: Lastly, I let my kids customize their writing portfolios! My daughter used some washi tape and drew a few of her favorite animals; my son drew a Star Wars tie-fighter on his. My husband chuckled when he saw them next to each other and noted quite a difference in theme! 🙂 Simple things like letting your kids customize their school items helps them take ownership and give personality to their projects.

I hope this post was helpful to you! This series will feature each of the 15 genres we sampled this year, as well as my notes with what worked well (and what didn’t!)

Stay tuned!

Cait