One thing I love, is a good tradition. I have tried to create traditions in our family, as it has grown, as well as in our homeschool. A few of my favorites are:

• Gifting our kids a “birthday book” each year on their birthday, and having family members sign it
• Matching mom-and-daughter outfits on Christmas Day
• Reading Little Pilgrim’s Progress together each summer

Recently, I have been reflecting on how repetition, and tradition, play a role in homeschooling. I think repetition is a simple yet overlooked element of learning (you can read more about this, in this blogpost).

Homeschool Tradition: Writing

It may sound funny to incorporate traditions academically, but I think it is doable and important! Going along with how repetition is important for learning, repeating projects or concepts in your homeschool can really solidify concepts for your kids. Some benefits to having academic traditions include:

• Reinforcing previous learning
• Building on previous learning
• Drawing new connections from previous learning
• Forming stronger bonds within your family, through tradition
• Growing your kids’ confidence in their knowledge & skills

I have seen all of these benefits, and more, in repeating our Summer Sensory Essay this year.

Teaching Creative Writing in Homeschool

When I first started brainstorming how to teach creative writing in homeschool, I thought back to my own elementary school experience! Sitting in my desk, especially in third and fourth grade, I remember working on engaging creative writing projects. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Prawer, encouraged us to read a variety of genres so that in turn our writing could become more diverse. I remember having a little booklet of colored cardstock, where we would keep track of what genres we had read that month and make little summaries, star ratings, and get a star sticker from her once that genre was completed.

Along with making sure we were reading a variety of genres, we explored many genres of writing. Last year, I decided to try a little experiment with my own kids, when it came to creative writing! (You can read about the detail of that experiment, here). We ended up doing 21 different creative writing projects last year, which I felt very proud of! (Creative writing projects listed in this post).

We started school on August 17 this year, because this mom was rarin’ to go! 🙂 We kicked off the writing this year with our classic, Summer Sensory Essay.

Sensory Essay in Homeschooling

To be honest, teaching sensory writing in homeschooling is super fun, because you get to use all five senses! When I first taught this last year (to my then-second and fourth graders), we did little mini experiments to really bring the “senses” theme home.

We did a bakery theme, to keep things fun, memorable, and “warm up” our writing juices:

• TASTING: I bought one of those delicious tuxedo cakes from Costco, to practice for “taste” writing. We brainstormed words together, on my favorite chart paper: words like: sweet, soft, melts in your mouth, delicious, chocolatey, velvety, and smooth.
• HEARING: for the hearing portion of our practice, I played a few sounds from Spotify that I thought may be heard in a bakery: a timer beeping, people talking, a standing mixer blending ingredients, etc. Spotify had a surprising array of sound effects that worked well! I also brainstormed with the kids, for other sounds you may hear: chewing–ha! Cash register beeping, silverware clinking, etc.
• SEEING: this one was a bit more concrete for my kids, since they could see the tuxedo cake while they brainstormed (and ate!) They came up with words like: brown, tan, black, white, smooth, spongy, rectangular, decorated
• TOUCHING: This is always a fun one. My kids tried to think of words that made sense for touching the cake with their hands (sticky!) as well as how it felt in their mouths (melty, chocolatey, soft, rich)
• SMELLING: For the cake, they thought of words like: sweet, chocolatey, sugary, and delicious. For something like cake, there are some repeats among the senses!

Once we had a practice session under our belt, we moved on to the Sensory Essay itself. Last year, I had the kids both do a Summer Sensory Essay based on a new family resort we had visited that summer, for our family vacation. This way, we could all brainstorm together, bounce ideas off one another, and share our perceptions. Even with the shared brainstorming, my kids still came up with distinctly different essays by the end, which I loved!

This year, my kids wrote their Summer Sensory Essays on two different summer experiences!

Structuring & Teaching Sensory Essays in Homeschool

Here are the steps I took, to teach the Summer Sensory Essay start to finish:

1. Pick a topic: I have my kids brainstorm an experience they had, this summer. Typically it is something that lasted more than one day; this gives them plenty to work with. However, if the experience was rich enough (and they can brainstorm content for all five senses), a one-day experience could work, too! Examples are: a family vacation, a summer camp, a family reunion, swimming at beaches near your home, exploring or hiking in the woods, a holiday like the 4th of July, a particularly unique outing with friends, etc.
2. Grab a Five Senses graphic organizer: Graphic organizers are a great way to, well, organize your information! I like the visual aspect, because this helps kids compartmentalize their ideas. We use two graphic organizers from Teachers Pay Teachers that are both free! This one has lines, and this one has a big unlined space for each “sense.” Take a peek at both, and see which you prefer. My daughter used the lined one this year:

If you read that, yes it does say “piyels of bat poop” under the “sight” category–which was a notable thing she remembered, after visiting the Blanchard Springs Caverns in Arkansas! Gross, but notable, right?!

3. Rough Draft (model first): Once your kids have filled in their five senses graphic organizers, you can move on to the rough draft. I typically write out a sample draft, or at least the introduction, for my kids, so that they can reference an example. You can also post sentence starters, so that they have those as anchors, as they write.

This essay was a bit longer than most, because it was a senses-based essay, and there are five senses. You could do:

• 5 paragraphs, one for each sense
• An introduction, the five sense paragraphs, and a conclusion
• A combination of these things, tweaked however your child needs

They can use the sentence starters, your model, and their five senses notes to write a few sentences in each paragraph. My kids typically do five sentences per paragraph, and five paragraphs total. If you are just starting out, you can definitely start smaller than that. You could even write the first few essays as a group, and have your kids each contribute 1-2 sentences per paragraph.

4. Final Draft: What you require for a final draft is heavily dependent on your kids’ ages, their writing level, their experience with writing, and their ability to type. We have done many combinations:

• Handwritten rough draft, mom edits, handwritten final draft
• Handwritten rough draft, mom edits, typed final draft (this is what my 5th grader Graham did this week, because he prefers to type and it’s much neater ;))
• Handwritten rough draft, mom edits & types, handwritten final draft (what my 3rd grade daughter Emmaline did this week, because she still writes faster than she can type)

My daughter has not been typing for as long as my son, so for each essay, I will probably leave it up to her how she chooses to do her final draft. Sometimes she’ll choose to handwrite it in a nice pen like she did this time, and other times I think she’ll choose to type it. Both of my kids use typingclub.com, to learn typing, which we really like.

I hope these steps are helpful! If you try this with your kids, let me know how it goes!

With love,

Cait