Wandering from IEW after 4 years...

[Faith Dean]

I hate to admit it, but I think I'm going to have to try a different writing program with my DD 8. My DD 10 and DD 9 both love IEW, understand the principles, think Andrew Pudewa is hilarious, and use the concepts pretty well in their own compositions. We are in SWI B (along with Fix-It grammar, which is going swimmingly) after using SWI A and SICC A, as well as a couple of theme-based books. We started early and slowly with IEW and I never thought I'd have to look to a different program. These DDs are the first of seven.

 

Enter DD 8 who would rather run around the backyard, build forts, do paper crafts, play her violin, or do ANYTHING other than put pencil to paper. While I can push to get narrations out of her, she can't stand to sit still and apply any sort of stylistic techniques to her writing (i.e. dress-ups). I don't think it's just that she doesn't like writing, I think she really struggles with the concepts of IEW. We s.l.o.g.g.e.d. through Bible Heroes and All Things Fun & Fascinating, and we are about a third of the way through the Fables, Myths & Fairytales, but it is not clicking. Her writing doesn't seem to be improving. While I can get her to light up talking about what quality adjectives are or what strong verbs are vs. banned verbs, when we go to apply those things to any sort of paragraph structure, she melts down.

 

I don't want to create a hatred of writing, so I need something simple and straightforward that perhaps just gets across some sentence and simple paragraph practice. We are using FLL 4 which is great, but it doesn't really address composition. I've just recently looked into WWE, but don't know if the narrations and copywork would bog her down. I might start with level 3 if we give it a try. Two other options I'm looking at are WriteShop and Writing Strands, but I have no clue if any of these would be a good fit.  WWE looks pretty dry, and DD needs a creative outlet. Does WWE include enough opportunity for adding some stylistic techniques? If not, do WriteShop or Writing Strands offer some of this? My hope is to get back to IEW at some point in the future, but I don't want to set aside composition altogether right now.

 

Any opinions or comparisons of these programs for a somewhat reluctant writer?