Adventures in a Messy Life

Hands on learning for active learners

  • Home page
    • Start Here
    • About Us
    • Get all of the posts now!
    • Disclosure and other blogging information
  • Homeschooling
    • Homeschool Curriculum
    • Why I homeschool (comments from a former teacher)
    • Homeschooling and the Holidays
  • History and geography
    • Ancient History Lessons
    • Modern History lessons
    • American History Lessons
    • LEGO history
  • Science
  • Bible Curriculum
  • STORE

Multi-sensory writing curriculum

December 11, 2014 Ticia 12 Comments

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.

Multi-sensory writing curriculum{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

multi-sensory writing curriculum manipulatives

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.

RhodeWays teacher manual

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.

multi-sensory writing brainstorming 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)

Thanksgiving family

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).

Christmas tree decorating

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.

family visits

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.

Roman soldier

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

2 weeks of school

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.

 

homeschool, reading and writing, reviews Homeschool curriculum, writing

Comments

  1. Almost Unschoolers says

    December 12, 2014 at 6:53 am

    Sounds like you’ve been in a Christmas whirlwind! The Main Street Bethlehem set-up sounds fabulous, as does the time spent with the Grandparents. My Mom is scheduled to arrive next week, we’re planning quite a bit of cookie making, and snuggling in front of Christmas movies, and the general enjoying of family type stuff, as well.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      December 12, 2014 at 8:32 am

      It has felt a bit like one these past few weeks, but it’s been fun (other than the sickness).

  2. Claire says

    December 12, 2014 at 7:34 am

    Sorry you’ve all been ill, that puts a bit of a dampener on all things Christmasy – although you seem to be handling well and are as busy as usual!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      December 12, 2014 at 8:33 am

      I don’t react well to being sick, so I usually turn it into a “I’m not sick at all, everything is fine” moment, right up until I collapse from exhaustion.

  3. Phyllis says

    December 12, 2014 at 8:22 am

    I don’t know where you get all your energy! What wonderful Christmas fun and lots of great learning, too! I am impressed.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      December 12, 2014 at 8:34 am

      Thanks! It’s been a fun couple of weeks, but I’m looking forward to things calming down some more.

  4. Lucinda says

    December 12, 2014 at 3:26 pm

    I love the Bethlehem block – that is so cool! Fab picture of Batman with the stern soldier. I’m feeling so Christmasy seeing everyone’s decorating posts.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      December 15, 2014 at 9:18 am

      He was just so tickled to get that picture.

  5. Natalie PlanetSmartyPants says

    December 14, 2014 at 2:27 pm

    Busy times! Sorry there was sickness in your family. We sort of plodded through all of us not being 100% but nobody got all out sick. I think being able to visit a pretend Bethlehem is really cool. Next time I am in Israel I might try to get to a real one 🙂

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      December 15, 2014 at 9:18 am

      If you do I want to see pictures!

  6. Marie-Claude Leroux says

    December 16, 2014 at 10:57 am

    What a busy, fun week! (except for the not feeling good of course, I hope everyone is feeling better). The Bethlehem street sounds incredible – what a great experience for everyone.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      December 17, 2014 at 2:16 pm

      It really is incredible. I love all the attention to detail they put in. Everyone seems to be finally better.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

Help!!!! I need to know:

Categories

 book and a movie combo

Copyright © 2023 ·