A Fun Day with WriteShop

I promise that I am not being paid by WriteShop, nor am I affiliated with them in any way!  I am just an enthusiastic customer.  In my 8th year of homeschooling, I have finally found a program that works for our family! 

Today, we were working on the second writing project for each boy.  (Each project has multiple steps).  For both, their was laughter and enjoyment.  Bug and I did a fun activity where we went from the general to the specific.  I had not expected him to like it, but he really got into it.  Bee had fun on his thesaurus activity, coming up bizarre answers. 

This program is very low stress but somehow manages to be effective.  It is also far cheaper than a class or online tutor.  I do not regret using those options in the past, but it is nice that I don't feel like I have to use an outside teacher and have the option of offering writing in-house. 

A Day Homeschooling a 4th Grader and an 8th Grader

I am pretty happy with our daily routine.  We are in a weird situation with few outside activities right now.  I am hoping that we'll add in more park days, that the boys will each get to do a robotics team, and we need to start piano again.  But all of those are pending for various reasons.  If the robotics teams do not work out, we will have to add in a science activity of some sort.

I am putting more responsibility on the boys for finishing their own work.  They have to finish in order to get screen time.  If they do not finish the interactive portions of their day by late afternoon, it is too late, because I am not going to work with them at that point. 

Of course, I count anything they do that is academic as "school!"  For instance, Bug gave a spontaneous oral report on the eating habits of archer fish, and I wrote that down!  

Right now, here is Bug's checklist:

• Bible (listen to me read from the Golden Children's Bible, for religious reasons as well as cultural literacy)
• Geography (listen to a chapter from a beautiful book called Minn on the Mississippi).  
• Writing (an activity from Write Shop level D)
• Spanish (we are burning through the Speekee videos and plan to try another program)
• Math (could be Khan Academy, a chapter from Life of Fred, a game, problems I write for him, a workbook page--I give him a lot of choice in this area)  
• Spelling (we do a much abbreviated version of All About Spelling, Level 4).
• Handwriting (a very short sentence).  

All of his lessons are very short.  We don't do any formal reading.  He chooses to spend hours a day listening to audiobooks. 

Here is Bee's checklist:

• Bible (Even though Bee is 13 years old, has good Biblical literacy from 2 years of Sunday school, as well as a wonderful homeschool Biblical Literacy course, I have asked him to join us for this.  For the first 11 years of his life, I was an atheist-agnostic, and I feel sad that I never read Bible stories to him.  So, it is special for me now to read them to all three children.)  
• Write Shop
• Social Studies (this may be reading his literature selection, watching his documentary, or working on a paper)
•  Algebra
• Spanish (online lesson or watch an episode of Mi Vida Loca on the BBC website)