Why I Love Our Writing Program

After three years of struggling to help my creative son get his thoughts organized and on paper (and after several unsuccessful programs), we are having a lot of success using the Writing Strands series. He loves the candor and humor of the program. The author speaks directly to the student in a casual, kid-speak sort of way. BigBro loves that. He no longer complains about writing assignments. I love that.

But the absolute best part is that BigBro is learning while having fun, and has really let some of his creativity fly. His latest example, from this morning, is here: (I let him type his writing assignments in Word; this is copied directly from there)

*****************************************

The Duck-a-Puss

There once was a kitten who was raised by a mother duck. The kitten was named Snuffles, and it acted like a duck.

One day, when the ducks were going to swim in a pond, Snuffles was waddling (or at least trying to waddle) behind the other ducklings, and kept falling over. Now Snuffles was getting very annoyed by this. When they finally got to the pond, Snuffles was tired. Where did the ducks go? Yipes! They’re in the pond! Snuffles was scared to go in the pond. What would he do? Wait?

Finally, the ducks got out of the pond, and they walked home. When they got home, it was dinner time. Yuck! Snuffles hated the seaweed they ate but he was a duck-a-puss anyway.

Wait! What was that? It ran into a hole. It looked like a furry chicken. He asked duckling mom and she said it was a MOUSE!

He just had to chase it. He slipped out of the house and peeked into the hole. This is what happened next: he heard a shriek, “EEEK”, and saw a brown blur shoot past him, and he chased it. The other ducklings watched in amazement, as Snuffles thought, “this is what I want to be.”