just write, they say: how to teach writing in homeschool

Is it really necessary to teach kids the mechanics of writing? You might not be surprised that I’d say yes.

It’s a means of creative expression, of connecting, and sometimes of encouraging. Writing certainly is a means of learning what I think, why I think what I think, and being fearless in expressing it.

You might ask: how to teach writing in homeschool? It doesn’t have to be complicated as pricey curriculum providers suggest it could be though.

---

---

---

How to teach writing in a homeschool…

When I hear someone’s clever story, I think, There, that’s your book! That’s the story you should write. I assume that they’d also like to WRITE their story.

Often, the thought didn’t dawn on them.

Oh, there are plenty out there that spend money on fancy pens and journals like me, but also many who think Facebook posts are too vulnerable.

Whether you like to ‘rent tables’ (purchase coffee) at your favourite café to tap tap on your Toshiba, or just want your kids to know how to communicate clearly, writing will always be necessary.

Ultimately, writing is the transmission of what’s inside my grey matter to what’s inside my grey matter.

And if I want you to understand me, I’ll need to learn to communicate. Putting that communication on paper helps to clarify what I want to say and how to say it.

“Writing is the painting of the voice”.

Voltaire

The basic five that I teach my kiddos are to just write, show, don’t tell, don’t use adverbs, use the five senses, and write often.

1. Just Write

Try to come up with something clever before you pick up that pen and you might not write.

Write crap, the established author spoke at a conference, and though I prefer using ‘crap’ in only a holy way, just write isn’t an absurd suggestion.

Somehow the magic comes when the hands press that pen into paper, or fingers tap on those keys.

Much to my kiddo’s chagrin, “write crap” is the first step.

But mom, you said to write crap!

Yup, honey, I did say that. But you don’t leave it crappy. As dog owners know everywhere, clean up the crap!

Real writers rewrite.

---

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have”.

Oscar Wilde

---

---

2. Show, don’t tell…

An oft-repeated mantra in the world of writing, this is the basis for my teaching creative writing to my kiddos.

Create a picture, with words, and allow the nuances to surface. Show me what happened….don’t tell me.

I got up, made my bed, brushed my teeth, and went to school. This, being an oft-repeated diary entry from when I was seven, is an example of telling.

After pulling my dirty blonde hair with the hard bristled brush into a pony, I snatched my toothbrush from the green cup and swirled it around my mouth a couple of times. Enough. I gotta go. The bus is coming!

The preceding paragraph is an example of showing: painting a picture with words. Ultimately, they’re the same story.

But one leads a reader to wonder what might happen next, while the other makes me wonder to whom I’m reporting.

---

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart”.

Maya Angelou

---

---

3. Don’t use adverbs.

Everyone says this in professional writing, but if you think about it, adverbs are a lazy man’s form of describing anything, second only to cursing, which is the lazier man’s version.

He walked slowly. (Who cares).  After his mom told him to go make his bed; he plodded up the stairs.

She ate quickly. (Oh ya). Her mouth wasn’t quite closed, or quite finished with one bite before the next forkful was stuffed in.

She stomped angrily. (Suck it up). Pound, pound, pound. She didn’t want to leave this playground, and her mama wasn’t making her.

Adverb descriptions don’t elicit a reaction, except possibly a yawn.

I’m not sure why we’re taught adverbs in grammar if we’re not supposed to use them. But adverbs tell, they don’t show us how something is done.

---

---

4.  How to teach writing in homeschool? Teach them to include the six senses.

As an exercise, ask your kids to try describing food. Smell it, taste it, touch it, hear it (you can hear popcorn pop), see that brownie in all its chocolatey, gooey glory…

Taste it…

Hear it…

Touch it…

See it… or smell it…

Now scan through your story and check to see if at least a few of those senses have been expressed. Writing feels real when you can taste it, touch it, smell it, hear it, and see it.

But yes, I said six senses.

There is, I am certain, a sixth sense.

We all use it.

We don’t all trust it. But when we do trust it, we can sense the aura in a room.

We can tell when someone doesn’t like someone else. Or when someone walked into your house after yelling at her kids. That sixth sense brings a certain “je ne sais quoi” to writing that no other sense can.

There’s an underlying belief that the character is real because she feels things that we all know we feel. As the writers of the Mentalist know well…

---

---

5. Write often.

All inhibitions decline as we continue doing anything repeatedly.

I have become comfortable on ice–with sharp knives as balancing agents under a shoe-tightened embrace.

So you might wonder why I, a Canadian, can’t perform a triple axle, shriek to an ice spray halt or keep up to Canada Silver speedskater, Denny Morrisson–but surely hockey is in my blood? Sorry to slash the stereotype. I don’t care for hockey (and despite my travel to the Arctic Ocean, I’ve not seen an igloo either).

But I have been on skates once a week for the last few months, with my skating tutors (the children’s skating lessons have paid double duty), and I can now make bubbles going forward (still attempting backward bubbles). And if you don’t know what a bubble is, well, that might mean you know technical terms and might giggle knowing that your four-year-old could skate figure eights around me.

But with repeated efforts I have made, my inhibitions have declined and I’m even making intentional turns, or slowing down without slamming myself into the boards. I am making progress because I’m persisting.

---

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

Louis L’Amour

---

How to teach writing in homeschool? There are many aspects of writing that I share with my kiddos.

And many more that I am still learning in my spare time, reading books such as Writing Articles from the Heart by Marjorie Holmes, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and Stephen King’s On Writing.

---

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling, like dew, upon a thought produces that which make thousands, perhaps millions think”.

Lord Byron

---

---

People also ask:

• Introducing Britt Acciavatti, Self-Love Note Writer & Eclectic Homeschool Mama
• How to Celebrate Diversity & Kinship with Amber O’Neal Johnston
• Homeschool Mama Self-Care: Nurturing the Nurturer
• food for creative thought: how I incorporate writing into daily life
• finding a writing voice

---