Not to brag or anything, but my husband is a published author. He went to a private college on scholarship thanks to his writing ability and has written both fiction and non, short and long. At this point in life, writing is a hobby. His career is on the other, more editorial side of publishing. Obviously, I fancy myself a bit of a writer as well. My point really isn’t to boast about our literary world, but to point out that, with all this writing and publishing (and, of course, reading) going on, one would think this would be a big part of our homeschool, right? One could think that, but one would be wrong. My children read quite a bit, but their education on the writing side has been severely neglected.
My boys like to write comics. They create their own characters, draw all the pictures, and write the dialogue. These comics are what made me realize how much writing instruction my kids have not received. As I was pondering how to start my Big Boy, age ten, on a writing program, and what writing program to introduce, I was offered the opportunity to review Writers in Residence from Apologia Educational Ministries. For our review, we received the Volume 1 (Apprentice) full set, which comes with a consumable all-in-one student text and workbook and a separate answer key.
Writers in Residence is a full language arts curriculum. It incorporates grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and formatting into the lessons, teaching them in the context of the student’s own writing. For Big Boy, this works really well. He doesn’t respond well to things if he doesn’t understand the purpose, and he finds lessons that try to teach him these things separately pointless and boring. But because these lessons are taught in the context of his own fun writing, he understands why it’s important. Sort of like how doing a math worksheet can be boring and seem pointless, but going to a store and calculating how much you can save on a new video game is fun and helpful.
The book offers a suggested schedule of four days per week. It recommends using it at least three days a week in order to get the full benefit. You can also do five days per week, or adjust according to what works best for your child. We chose to follow the recommended four day schedule. When done on the four day schedule, you can finish the entire Volume 1 in thirty two weeks. Each day we worked for half an hour or less. As we got further into the lessons, Big Boy was able to complete them on his own with very little supervision from me. I looked over his writing and gave input, but he did most of the day to day lessons on his own. This works really well for both of us because he prefers to work on his own, and it frees me up to focus on working with Little Man.
The book is broken down into six units. Each unit has four modules, each including between ten and sixteen sections. The units all begin with a “Spotlight on Christian Writers.” One writer is highlighted and interviewed in each. This offers the kids an opportunity to learn more about writing in the real world and see how these writers have used their skills in different ways.
Overall, Big Boy liked this program a lot. He liked that he could do a lot of it on his own, and he enjoyed the challenge and freedom that came with coming up with his own writings. I really liked that all the aspects of Language Arts were incorporated in, teaching my child important grammar rules while he is engaged in writing his own fun essays. This program has been a great fit for him and I am so glad it fell into our life at just the right time.
