This is some of the poetry she shared.

Nothing like dressing up for you big performance!  (Insert rolling eyes.)  The poster in the back was a display teaching the audience (her family) about poetry forms and the tv is on because it was playing soft music.

Yummy banana bread.  Every coffeehouse poetry reading needs food!

This week and next, the kids are working on presidential projects.  I’ll share them with you soon!

Mahayla’s is titled The Mountain Trail and is about a horse riding incident.  She submitted this story to the Girlhood Home Companion and we think it’s going to be published!

Caleb’s is called Josh the Ice Skater and teaches us all a lesson about skating on a not-so-frozen pond.

This week, I asked each of them to choose a children’s book with predictable patterns.  They had to study the pattern and write their own version of the story using the same pattern.

Mahayla chose Fortunately by Remy Charlip and Caleb Chose Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews.  We sewed the inner pages of the books then used Gorilla glue for the covers.  We won’t use Gorilla glue again!

Publishing certainly isn’t for every story, but it’s valuable experience at least a couple times a year.  I’m considering asking the local preschool if we can come read these to the children.  I think that, too, would be good experience for my children!

Creative Writing Ideas

I’ve written a few blog posts in the past about writing that you can find here.

Here are some great online resources, too.

Teacher’s Desk

Can Teach

Creative Composition Without Handwriting

Ten Creative Writing Ideas

Very Unique and Interactive Ideas

Homeschool Learning – scroll down for some lesson ideas

And these ideas came from some of the ladies at co-op:

-Don’t hinder a poor writer with writing their own stories.  Let them narrate their stories to you or tape record their stories, or even type them if they are good typers.

-Playing instrumental music while writing can spark creativity.

-Ask your children to act out a story, then write it.

-Draw a setting and then add the story.

-Write in small spurts.  Maybe develop characters one day, then develop the setting, decide on the conflict – eventually put all the elements together into a rich story.

-Do back and forth stories to develop detail.  The child or parent starts telling a story, when they break off suddenly, the other person has to continue the story.  This can go back or forth as many times as you like.

-Buy and Illustory set to encourage completing a really well-written story.

Yes, as you can see we do trick-or-treat.  I know it’s a controversial topic among Christians, but I hope it won’t become controversial here.  Our children enjoy dressing up and eating candy.  That’s all.  No more, no less.  :)

I found the 10×10″ spiral notebooks in the scrapbooking section at Walmart.  The covers are plain and colored, so they will decorate nicely when we get around to it.  Inside, there are 50 card stock, archival quality pages just the perfect size for a memories journal.

I copied several pictures from the trip in wallet size.  Then, gave the kiddos the pictures, some brochures, scissors and glue sticks, and let them have at it.  The only thing I asked was that they write some of their memories on each page.  How’s that for a secret writing lesson?

They loved this “assignment”!  We all agreed that we should try to do a page or two for each of the field trips we take this year.  What a great keepsake these will make!

We had such a good time!  Sorry, there are no pictures from the party.  My digital camera decided to stop working on this important night!  There are plenty of pictures on my Mom’s camera, though!

My sister put together a Power Point presentation of all sorts of pictures my Mom dug up from the past 60 years of my Dad’s life.  She put it to ”oldies” music.  It turned out beautifully!

My Dad doesn’t need a thing materially, so I struggled for quite some time with what to give him for such a momentous birthday.  My friend, Jody, told me of an idea she did for her dad that turned out to be a hit, so I grabbed the idea and ran.  I wrote my Dad a letter with 60 memories I have of him.  I printed it on pretty scrapbook paper and put it in a leather scrapbook journal.  It’s a gift I hope he’ll treasure for years to come!

Happy Birthday Daddy!!

The newsletter includes a story or journal entry from each child that they wrote in August, a Bible verse we’ve been memorizing, an August weather wrap-up, a brief review of our unit study and some fun experiments we did, plus a book review written by Mahayla.  (I’ll admit that I did most of the typing this time around.  We were getting used to the new software and I was trying to teach them how to add clipart and pictures, so I didn’t want to overwhelm them with the typing.  Next month, they’ll take over more of the work.)

We’ve all decided that a monthly newsletter is a fun idea.  I hope all the relatives who get bombarded with them think it’s a good idea, too!