The Value of “Published Books” for Homeschool Writing

Creating opportunities for children to publish their work can be incredibly rewarding. Published books for kids offer a tangible way for young writers to see their creativity and effort come to life.

When students go beyond the final draft and produce a finished bound book, it instills a sense of pride and accomplishment that motivates further learning. More than just a polished assignment, a published book lets children hold in their hands the result of hard work, imagination, and the structured process of writing.

This week, we celebrated our second round of book publishing this year. My children poured their hearts into writing original stories, and after taking them through the entire writing process, we transformed these final drafts into “published” books. Let me walk you through why this experience matters and how simple it can be to achieve.

This post contains affiliate links.

Published Books: Why They’re Important

This week was our second round of book publishing this year. Back in February, after the kids had written original stories from picture prompts, we took the stories through the entire writing process:

• Prewriting (brainstorming, story mapping, free writing, list making, orally telling a story, drawing a picture)
• Writing (aka, the rough draft)
• Revising (Does it make sense? Should I add/take away/change anything? Does it begin and end well?)
• Editing (capitals, punctuation, grammar usage, spelling, etc.)
• Final Draft

We don’t take every piece of writing through this entire process. When we do, the final draft usually looks like a “neat and complete” finished copy. Sometimes, the final draft becomes more like a “published” copy.

Beyond the regular final draft, a published draft includes illustrations, a cover, and some binding. Why go to the extra effort? Publishing helps children understand the audience behind their writing. Publishing helps children take the writing full circle. In other words, when illustrating, it’s easier to assess whether the story really tells all it was meant to tell. Artistic children, especially, will find the publishing process the reward for the hard work of writing. And it makes children feel special or accomplished to see their books sit on their bookshelf next to “real” authors.

Our Latest Published Books

There are many easy ways to publish books. Whatever works for your family and your available supplies are just fine. The examples below were typed, illustrated, and bound using a comb-binding machine.

Mahayla’s story, The Mountain Trail, was not only home-published but submitted to the Girlhood Home Companion. It was published in the magazine!

I typed Caleb’s story, Josh the Ice Skater. He wrote the revised and edited draft, but I helped with the typing because he’s so new at typing.

One Additional Idea for Published Books

Using “real” authors as examples of writing style is an excellent method for encouraging good writing in our children. Simply read good books and talk with your children about what the author did to make the writing good. Then, challenge your children to incorporate some of the author’s tactics in their writing.

Predictable pattern stories are perfect to use when beginning this method. Read a predictable book, discuss the pattern, and ask your child to write their story using the same pattern.

Predictable Pattern Books for Writing Models

Using this method, Mahayla chose Fortunately by Remy Charlip, and Caleb Chose Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews. (Their final drafts were published by sewing the inner pages of the books and then using gorilla glue for the covers. We won’t use gorilla glue again.)

Fortunately follows the pattern of fortunate and unfortunate situations that happen to the main character throughout the storyline. In other words, something fortunate happens that leads to something unfortunate happening…over and over until it ends on a fortunate note. Mahayla followed the same fortunately/unfortunately pattern using her own creative situations.

Ten Black Dots illustrates the growing pattern of the numbers 1-10 and uses dots to make number pictures that are part of the story. The first page uses one dot, the second uses two dots, and so on. Caleb followed the same pattern, creating his pictures from the growing number of dots. This book utilized his creativity!

Published Stories One More Step

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

Helpful Products in the Shop

Other Posts You Might Like

 Using Picture Books to Teach Writing Candy Math Activities Newsletter Writing