Multi-sensory writing curriculum

I’ve been using the WITS writing curriculum for almost a year or so now.  It’s an amazing writing curriculum bought last year at GHC, and it’s been a great purchase.

{Disclosure, I bought this, and since I like to be able to have reviews of all the stuff I use, I’m putting my review up here, so there, no money, just because I like it}

So far I’ve bought the RhodeWays resource manual and the Writing Ideas TileS.  Come January I’m planning on buying the full thing, I only had the money at that time for those parts.

 

What I like about RhodeWays Writing: it’s a multi-sensory writing curriculum

I love love love the Writing Ideas TileS.  I love how interactive they are.  I love the visual aspect and the feel of them.  But that doesn’t really tell you much about them, so let me explain better.

Each tile represents a paragraph.  The outer edge of the tile is indented to remind you to indent paragraphs.  The tile will have different numbers of light bulbs on them with different colors.  Each light bulb represents a sentence, and the colors show what type of sentence it is.

Pretty simple right?

Here’s where it gets fun, now you can combine these paragraphs all sorts of ways to make them into papers, stories, and essays.

 

How to use a multi-sensory writing curriculum

If you are looking for a curriculum to say “write this today,” then this is not the curriculum for you.  It’s actually why I like it because I can incorporate it into what we’re already doing, rather than having yet another assignment to grade.

After working through the first couple of lessons of what a paragraph is and what to look for in the paragraph, we moved on to working on the types of paragraphs.

So far we have been using our history to improve their writing.  As we read the lessons they work on writing more about the lesson with the type of paragraphs I’ve assigned for the day.

 

After Christmas I’m planning on buying the full curriculum, at the time I had just enough money to buy the manual and one set of the Writing Idea TileS.  Now I want the mini-posters for types of writing and the lessons for the individual paragraph styles.  I think that will really help improve the kids’ writing.

I’m writing this now because come January I’m getting serious about the kids’ writing.  They are way behind where I want them to be in this area (and their handwriting, it’s like the messy writing fairy came and zapped them this past month).

 

Now on to what we’ve been up to this past couple of weeks (aside from being sick, so much sickness)

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving with my family.  The kids had lots of fun playing with cousins, and watching movies together.  The next day we got our Christmas tree (and I made all the kids pose with the Reindeer).

Which led to the massive Christmas decorating rounds.  Getting out our various nativity sets, and decorations.  Despite all the decorations we pulled out I’m sure there’s a missing tub of Christmas decorations somewhere.

The following weekend Jeff’s parents came down to visit.  We made SO many cookies, way more than I care to count, and I’ve still got a batch of dough to roll out and make.

Everyone enjoyed the chance to hang out, play games together, and generally have fun.  We also headed up to Burnet to visit Main Street Bethlehem.  The Baptist church has turned an entire city block into first century Bethlehem, and it’s amazing to go through.  You can see examples of their projects at the time, handiwork, inns, taverns, a home, and of course the Roman guards.

Batman had to have a picture with the soldier, who was quite happy to pose with him.  Or willing to…

In the school front we learned about:

• Saint Boniface and the Christmas tree, appropriately timed from our Mystery of History 2 (affiliate link) lesson.
• We then went on to learn about Iconoclasts and Charlemagne.
• The kids learned about expanded notation in math, which they hate with a passion, and I’ve retaught this lesson in so many ways I’m going crazy.
• We learned about Christmas in Sweden, with yet another mishap in the kitchen.  I could almost write a book about our lessons going wrong.
• We learned about India and discovered we are not every good at spinning with a drop spindle.
• Oh, and we started the Winter Wonderland Art Class (affiliate link), and the kids have quite proudly given away two of their projects as Christmas presents so far.  I highly recommend the class if you’re looking for an art class for the non-artsy.

I’m going to link up over at Homegrown Learners because I’ve actually gotten this written relatively early.  I feel pretty proud of myself.