Need Help Choosing Among the
Home School Writing Curriculum Options?

Finding the best home school writing curriculum for your child can be a daunting task when there are so many options out there. How can you make sense of them all? Some home school curriculum options are very structured, others not; some emphasize lots of writing, others less. Some approach writing in a methodical approach, other curriculums in a more organic way. Confused yet?

Let’s take a look at some things you'll want to take into account when you look at home school writing curriculum:

• Do you want a structured approach, helping him gain skills in using various writing formats and word choices?
• Do you want to focus on helping your child love language and enjoy expressing himself? thus giving him confidence as he develops his own writer's voice?
• Is the way to raise a confident writer to help him become familiar with using various formats and phrases?
• Is the way to raise a confident writer through helping him be aware of what he thinks and have the ability to capture those precious insights and communicate them to others?
• Do you want to find tools that you could give to your child and he could learn on his own?
• Do you want to be highly involved in the process of teaching writing?
• Would you like someone else's feedback and guidance in evaluating your child's writing?
• Do you want help in creating a language-rich learning environment, full of Shakespeare, poetry, read-alouds, language games at home?
• Do you want to spend a relatively little amount of time and energy on the writing process during this season, choosing instead to focus on other subjects?

How you answer these questions will determine which home school writing curriculum will be the best fit for your family right now. Please note that the answers to those questions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, either.

I've included below a description of several options for home school writing curriculum. This list is by no means exhaustive, but I have tried to choose a representative sample of home school writing curriculum possibilities that you could compare to each other, and any other ones you are considering. I have not personally used all of these, but I will pass on the information I have learned so far.

A final bit of advice: look over the websites of these or any writing product you are considering. Look over any related blogs as well. Forget the sales pitches and testimonials for a minute. Is the writing interesting enough to make you want to read more? Do you laugh? Can you relate to anything shared? Good writing should be clear and concise, yes, but it should also touch you, the reader. After all, being an excellent writer and being an engaging one need not be mutually exclusive.

Let's move on to some examples of choices for home school writing curriculum you may be considering.

Sonlight Home School Writing Curriculum

Sonlight Home School Curriculum 's home school writing curriculum derives much of its approach from Charlotte Mason and Ruth Beechick. They offer a really well-planned out Instructor's Guide that you can either follow day by day or use as a base to come back to. There are dictation passages that relate to the readings, discussion, and narration questions. There are also numerous writing projects of various formats (poetry, persuasive essay, etc.), along with their fairly recent Grammar Ace program.

Brave Writer Home School Writing Curriculum

Brave Writer has become a favorite of our family’s over the past few years. Julie Bogart, author of The Writer's Jungle and the owner of the Brave Writer website, says:

My goal [is] to enhance the mother-child relationship through the teaching of writing rather than the usual weeping and gnashing of teeth that accompanies so many writing programs.

Sound promising?

One of many things I appreciate about Julie’s materials is that she approaches writing as – fancy this -- a writer. As a professional writer, editor, writing coach, and homeschooling mom herself, she melds those worlds together and offers numerous tools to help you guide your child to find his writing voice and to write well.

I sometimes describe the Brave Writer approach as starting from the inside out, beginning from what your child already knows. For instance, Lego Star Wars may not be “academic,” but my 9 year-old son sure knows a lot about it and thus he can learn to express himself about this topic on which that he really is an expert. Brave Writer builds the relationship between you and your child starting as you play with words, learn to love poetry, and affirm the unique way your child sees the world. Brave Writer covers writing techniques and helps your child gain skills that will builds on this as a foundation for later, more academic assignments.

Kids are tremendously interesting people, even the ones who write poorly. My goal is to help you do your job—to draw out the mind life of your child so that you can capture those precious thoughts in writing. What's on paper ought to be a fair and insightful representation of all that goes on in your kids' busy heads. And when it is, you and your young writers will love the results. That, in a nutshell, is why Brave Writer exists. Once kids realize that paper is a safe place for thought exploration, they can learn how to craft their writing into satisfying finished products that use all kinds of writing devices. Writing becomes a safe playground instead of an intimidating foreign country. Brave Writer works through all the steps from thought-origination to published work of writing. From Brave Writer Welcome.

You can browse the list of Brave Writer classes offered or read the A Brave Writer's Life in Brief for more information on her approach to home school writing curriculum. Her blog has a lot of material and information on her approach. And I admit that I have more than once laughed out loud at some of her entries.

A potential negative is that if you want a self-teaching method, you'll want to look elsewhere. Also, if you want a highly structured approach, you may feel this doesn't offer your child enough assignments or specifics of what to write about. Many people find they can easily apply the Brave Writer philosophy or approach with their own topics, though.

Institute for Excellence in Writing Home School Writing Curriculum

The Excellence in Writing (IEW) is a very popular home school writing curriculum. Based on the Classical Model of education, this approach to writing is more structured than Brave Writer. Its assignments help to develop skills which are stepping stones for creativity and expression of original ideas. One excerpt from their website is:

One of the fundamental ideas of the Classical Model is the emphasis on skills development as a prerequisite for creativity and expression. Many writing programs are set up first to help a child figure out what to write in order to be able to practice writing. With our syllabus, we separate the problems of "what to write" and "how to write." Young children do not have a wealth of experience and knowledge to draw upon when writing. In fact, it's a little absurd to ask them to write about their thoughts or feelings until they have practiced and are comfortable with the basic activity of putting sentences on paper. Therefore, in providing them with the content (what to write), in demonstrating a specific model to follow, and in giving them a concrete checklist of a variety of grammatical constructs and techniques to use in each paragraph, we can teach them to develop a high level of skill and confidence with writing. Because the classical model also encourages ability development by repetition, our approach of using everything learned so far in every paragraph written provides that repetition and allows even the most remedial student to produce a decent composition again and again with increasing independence. From Excellence in Writing FAQ on the Classical Model

So while Brave Writer and IEW both separate out the “what to write” from the “how to write,” you can see from the above excerpts that the starting points are quite different. IEW uses checklists and skill-building exercises, whereas Brave Writer uses a more organic approach to its exercises.

IEW does not list specific lesson plans for its home school writing curriculum, so it allows you to tailor your child’s writing to other topics you want your child to write about (like history or literature).

I am impressed with the IEW materials I have seen, but I have yet to incorporate them daily in our home school.

WriteShop Incremental Home School Writing Curriculum

WriteShop, like IEW, is an incremental writing program, although unlike IEW, it is only geared for middle and high school students (although on their website they do offer ideas and materials for younger students). Like IEW, it helps your child improve his or her sentence structure, provides checklists to help editing, and makes sure that skills that are learned are practiced over again for your child to remember and become more comfortable using. It also includes specific writing suggestions (for example, an exercise to describe a person).

Probably the biggest difference I can discern between WriteShop and IEW is that IEW offers less structure in implementing the skills learned, and more flexibility to apply what your child is learning to whatever you want to tailor it to. So, if you want to write your own lesson plans or know already how you want to apply the exercises, then IEW is probably a better choice for you. IEW’s materials (like their checklists) are easy to adapt to a variety of writing settings, whereas WriteShop’s checklists are specific to a specific writing skill.

If, on the other hand, you prefer to have a home school writing curriculum that offers you pre-written schedule ready to implement on Monday morning, with lesson plans and directions to give your child direction of what to do, you might feel more comfortable with WriteShop. That being said, however, WriteShop still allows leeway in choice (for instance, allowing the student to pick which item he wants to describe if the assignment is to describe an object). WriteShop comes in two levels, and they recommend Wordsmith Apprentice for students younger than 6th grade.

You can learn more about their philosophy from their page About Writeshop and see their products and prices here.

Write at Home

WriteAtHome is an online writing program that offers online classes, workshops, and other options for home schoolers. WriteAtHome uses skilled, professional writers as writing coaches to teach the classes and give individualized feedback to your student. One of these options is the Tapestry of Grace Tutorial, where your student turns in a certain number assignments or drafts of Tapestry of Grace assignments and their WriteAtHome tutor gives your child specific feedback. Although I haven't made use of their program yet, I plan to enroll our older students for later this year. I also love their WriteAtHome blog. It is full of wonderful entries about words, puns, and language. Clearly these folks love words and communicating effectively. Personally, these are the qualities I look for in someone who will have an impact in my children's writing journey. Excellent writing materials and tools are certainly necessary as part of your home school writing curriculum, but having a real person (besides mom or dad) interact with your child on his writing can be such an encouraging and uplifting experience. You can read someWriteAtHome testimonials. I'm impressed.

Writing Strands

Writing Strands is another popular writing curriculum that has won several awards. It is an incremental approach, comes in seven levels, and offers very specific topics to work through to learn skills. Each day’s activity (prewriting, revising, etc.) is suggested and mapped out for each assignment. The books are written to the student, so your child can easily know what to do for writing if you aren’t available. Naturally, you will still need to work with him on editing his work.

Some people have found that there isn’t enough review of the skills that are learned over time.

Writing Strands also sells a literature analysis program entitled Reading Strands.

Advanced Writing Resources

I first came across the Advanced Writing Resources

the year we were using The Robinson Self-Teaching Home School Curriculum. This is a teach-yourself approach. On their website you can sign up to hear a sample audio lesson.

Write Source

Although Write Source writing handbooks are not a writing curriculum, our kids love them so much I want to let you be aware of them. There are several levels and each has all sorts of writing helps – from examples of how to write a play or a persuasive essay, to tricky grammar points you need to remember. You'll find all sorts of useful information in a variety of levels.

I hope to look over the home school writing curriculum materials I have listed above that I haven’t used (WriteShop and Writing Strands) and add more to my review. Until then, I’d recommend if you want to know more, to read over the information at the following links:

Cathy Duffy's review of Writing Strands
• Comparison of IEW and WriteShop
• Review of IEW and Rod and Staff materials

Another option to consider is Weekly Writer, a new writing club for kids in grades 2-8. Through the club your kids can make pen pals, use a safe kid-friendly forum, ideas on real-life letter-writing, talent showcase, and all sorts of other interesteing options. I'm definitely looking at how I can incorporate this into our school next year.

Remember as you consider the choices before you that you don’t have to use the same curriculum for all the years that you will home school. Using a variety of approaches over the years can enrich your child’s experience and give them a broader understanding of the writing process. Some writing programs are only designed to cover a short season of your child’s writing, anyway. So rather than see choosing a writing curriculum as an “either/or” proposition, or “which one is best?” a better question really is, "what does my child need now?"

I hope the above information has been helpful for you. If you have any comments, please feel free to drop me a line though our Contact Us form.

Top of page

Back to Home Page from Home School Writing Curriculum

Looking for something? Search for it here:
Enter your search terms Submit search form   Web this site