Writing program for my 9 year old?

[seewah]

Hope someone out there can offer some guidance for me. My nine year old has never had a formal writing program. We do narrations (mostly oral, some written) about once a week. Next year I want to start something more formal with him.

 

He is a very bright student but does not love writing (the handwriting part of it ... the actual writing part is not too bad). We are doing Spelling Power (starting at Word Flow List K) for spelling and he is doing A Beka God's Gift of Language (5th grade level) for grammar this year. He is bored to tears with the A Beka book. I feel the A Beka grammar is more busy work for him. He catches on to a concept very quickly so do have to do sentence upon sentence of "underline the verb" or diagram this sentence gets to be very tedious for him.

 

I'd love to have something that might combine spelling, grammar and writing all into one for him. Is there anything like that available?

 

Writing With Ease looks to be fabulous, but I am wondering if it might be too easy for him?

 

(Another post coming soon on what to do with the same subjects for my five year old!)

 

Thanks so much for your help. These boards are so inspiring and helpful. I am so glad that I found this forum! :)

[seewah]

Oh, almost forgot!

 

Is there somewhere online to view sample pages of the Classical Writing program?

 

Thanks!

[stephanie]

Hope someone out there can offer some guidance for me. My nine year old has never had a formal writing program. We do narrations (mostly oral, some written) about once a week. Next year I want to start something more formal with him.

 

He is a very bright student but does not love writing (the handwriting part of it ... the actual writing part is not too bad). We are doing Spelling Power (starting at Word Flow List K) for spelling and he is doing A Beka God's Gift of Language (5th grade level) for grammar this year. He is bored to tears with the A Beka book. I feel the A Beka grammar is more busy work for him. He catches on to a concept very quickly so do have to do sentence upon sentence of "underline the verb" or diagram this sentence gets to be very tedious for him.

 

I'd love to have something that might combine spelling, grammar and writing all into one for him. Is there anything like that available?

 

Writing With Ease looks to be fabulous, but I am wondering if it might be too easy for him?

 

(Another post coming soon on what to do with the same subjects for my five year old!)

 

Thanks so much for your help. These boards are so inspiring and helpful. I am so glad that I found this forum! :)

 

Writing tales may be a good fit for him. It tells a story, and has spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics in it. In the end of the lesson, there is the re-writing of the story in their own words. I use it along with R&S 3. You can check samples out at Lulu.com. We really enjoy WT. HTH

[Beth in Central TX]

Classical Writing would be my suggestion. Here is a description of the program: http://home.att.net/~MikeJaqua/TheBooks.html and a grade level schedule: http://home.att.net/~mikejaqua/whichbookstobuy.html.

 

Oops...I forgot the Lulu link to view the samples. Here's Aesop: http://67.202.21.157/forums/showthread.php?p=153939#post153939 and here's all of the CW books: http://stores.lulu.com/classicalwriting

 

Click the book you want to look at; below the picture is a button to preview the item.

[seewah]

Classical Writing would be my suggestion. Here is a description of the program: http://home.att.net/~MikeJaqua/TheBooks.html and a grade level schedule: http://home.att.net/~mikejaqua/whichbookstobuy.html.

 

Thank you!

 

Is there a place online where I can see sample pages of the books as well? :)

[seewah]

Writing tales may be a good fit for him. It tells a story, and has spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics in it. In the end of the lesson, there is the re-writing of the story in their own words. I use it along with R&S 3. You can check samples out at Lulu.com. We really enjoy WT. HTH

 

Checking out Writing Tales and R&S right now ... thanks! :)

 

Where on Lulu.com do I look for the samples?

[Beth in Central TX]

I just edited my post to include the link. I meant to do that the first time...

[stephanie]

Checking out Writing Tales and R&S right now ... thanks! :)

 

Where on Lulu.com do I look for the samples?

 

I think you can click on something that has samples under WT. I'll have to go and check!

[stephanie]

Checking out Writing Tales and R&S right now ... thanks! :)

 

Where on Lulu.com do I look for the samples?

 

Ok, if you do a search for WT then you can preview the book, and you can see the table of contents. HTH!

[seewah]

Why do you think WWE will be to simple for him?

 

I think WWE would be a good fit for my six year old, but from looking at the sample lesson on the Peace Hill Press site, I can see that it would not be a good fit for my nine year old. He learned about capitalization, proper nouns, etc. several years ago. (I do realize that the sample is just showing weeks 2-3 of the book.) However, for my six year old, this would be a great fit. I am excited that this book is coming out. I am most likely going to do WWE and FLL1 with my six year old next year. :)

[HootOwl]

Have you considered Total Language Plus or Learning Language Arts through Literature? I'm actually considering TLP for my 4th grader next year, because I want to cut down on the number of workbooks for her to use. We tried TLP for 2nd grade as a supplement to our regular mix of language arts programs, but it was too much to do it all.

 

I really liked the book we chose for that year---The Whipping Boy. We were studying Middle Ages (SOTW) at that time, so it fit right in with our history studies.

 

Here's a link where you can view online samples:

 

http://www.totallanguageplus.com/

 

Click on the 3rd tab at the top of the page "Online Catalogue" then click on the box on the left "Novel Groupings". You can see the different guides available by age group.

 

Hope this helps!

[seewah]

Have you considered Total Language Plus or Learning Language Arts through Literature? I'm actually considering TLP for my 4th grader next year, because I want to cut down on the number of workbooks for her to use. We tried TLP for 2nd grade as a supplement to our regular mix of language arts programs, but it was too much to do it all.

 

I really liked the book we chose for that year---The Whipping Boy. We were studying Middle Ages (SOTW) at that time, so it fit right in with our history studies.

 

Here's a link where you can view online samples:

 

http://www.totallanguageplus.com/

 

Click on the 3rd tab at the top of the page "Online Catalogue" then click on the box on the left "Novel Groupings". You can see the different guides available by age group.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Oh, this looks very interesting. My 9 year old is a voracious reader ... so this might be a good fit for us to use during the summer months when we are on a lighter schedule.

[Guest]

The samples posted for WWE are for the first grade level. The book is to be used for 1st-4th grades. They just don't have wkbks for grades 3 and 4 yet. You don't need them, anyway, to use the course. The wkbks are just timesavers.

[seewah]

The samples posted for WWE are for the first grade level. The book is to be used for 1st-4th grades. They just don't have wkbks for grades 3 and 4 yet. You don't need them, anyway, to use the course. The wkbks are just timesavers.

 

Oh, well then that might be a good fit for my boys next year (1st grade and 4th grade). I must have missed where it said it was for those grades.

 

Thanks for that extra tidbit of info!

[kortney in AL]

We like Writing Tales. We'll move into CW next year.

[Storm Bay]

My 9 yo has been doing R&S for grammar and writing. The diagramming was a great change from underlining parts of speech and does have some writing as part of it. It does get harder every year, not just a lot of easy review. We're also looking for a more formal writing program for next year if we can work that into our budget, so I'll be rechecking out some of these suggestions.

[Brindee]

We are also using R&S for grammar and writing. My dd is in 6th grade, my 14yo ds is in 9th this year. We do other writing as well, but just on our own. A Beka Lang. did not work with us at all, but the R&S has done GREAT for both of my younger two!

 

I'm also checking out writing program suggestions!