Creation story writing prompt

The first two weeks of Mystery of History 1 (affiliate link) feel more like Sunday School than they do homeschool history.  They’re almost all lessons we’ve covered recently as we studied Genesis.  When it came time to come up with something different I was at a bit of a loss, then I came up with a brilliant idea and to make a Creation story writing prompt.

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Then I looked at the notebooking pages for lesson 1, and decided to have the kids write a short story:

Creation story writing prompt: What did the angels think as God created the world?

This gave us a great opportunity to work on the writing process, and editing.  They brainstormed on Monday, and came up with a wide variety of things the angels marveled at.  It seemed to be skewed towards what they liked.  Because I knew they don’t like writing, for pre-writing they were allowed to draw pictures to help them focus.

 

The next day they wrote their rough drafts, here’s the criteria I was looking for in the final draft:

1. At least 6 sentences
2. Descriptive words used, it’s not just an elephant, it was a gigantic elephant
3. Sentences start different ways
4. Spelling is correct
5. Good handwriting, letters formed correctly
6. Drawings with detail and at least 4 colors

On Wednesday they met with me and we edited their paper.  I emphasized over and over we are only fixing their mistakes, this is just what a rough draft should look like because you are just writing your story, not trying for perfect.  Otherwise it was so easy to get discouraged with all of the markings on the paper.

And on Thursday we wrote our final drafts.  The kids were all cautioned to make sure to include the corrections we’d made the day before, and to make sure they used their best handwriting.  I loved their writings.  And then sadly they all lost their final drafts, along with their rough drafts, and now their new “final drafts,” are full of errors.  They didn’t listen when I told them to put their work in their folders.

 

I think they will listen next time because they all had to rewrite parts of their work, which they did not like.

Finishing up pre-history of man

 

During this time we read the other lessons for the week, and the kids loved learning about Jubal and Tubal-Cain.  With them being the first inventors we decided to invent our own stuff.

Since it was the end of the day for us I let them happily invent away using the hot glue gun, the sewing machine, and whatever they desired.  Don’t tell the boys, but our dog chewed up their inventions, he really likes to chew on corks, which I’m starting to run low on (my original stash was one left in my classroom when I started teaching, but my kids have used all of those up).

Anyone know a good way, aside from drinking large amounts of alcohol, to get corks?

 

For our second week I remembered I don’t just have notebooking pages, but also coloring pages, and the kids happily colored away as I read to them {Side note, I scoffed at first at getting the super supplemental pack for MOH1 {affiliate link}, but now I LOVE it, so explore their extras they are WORTH it}.

 

The only lesson we did much with was Noah’s ark, and the kids happily wrote about all the animals going on the ark and coloring their notebooking pages.

 

I have to admit I wasn’t super inspired by the next two lessons, dinosaurs and Ice Age, so we did nothing aside from reading them, partially because of bad planning on my part.  I’m still getting used to having a schedule from Illuminations {affiliate link}, and last week I sucked at using my time well (combination of lots of things going on and headaches).  But, more on that Friday.

 

I’m gonna link up to: All Things Beautiful and her awesome history linkie, and Trivium Tuesdays.

Looking for more Ancient History ideas?

Check out my Mystery of History 1 pinterest board.

All of Ancient History ideas here on this blog.

But, if you want some more Biblical history, you should give them a try: