Reading with Zachary

Reluctant writers ... I have one, or actually more than one. Last year, we were fortunate to outsource our writing instruction to our local on-site charter school two times a week for my oldest two children. The teacher for this class was just fantastic, managing to even get my most reluctant writer enthusiastic and interested in some of the assignments. I couldn't have been happier. This year though that didn't work in our schedule, so we are back at home for writing instruction. Zach, age 13, is my hardest to encourage to write. He is wonderfully intelligent and creative, and will talk for hours on topics of interest to him. Getting him to write out that information though is like pulling teeth and always has been. He is and always has been an avid reader as well. So, in an effort to find a way to encourage him not only to write required items for history, science and so forth but also write more about things he is passionate about, just to keep the ideas flowing and practice getting those onto the page, his year-long assignment for this school year is a book review blog. He reads several books each week anyway, so this doesn't put any extra load on that. The new component is he needs to choose one book per week that he already read for pleasure and share it with people. Again, this is something he already does. He likes to recommend good books to his friends, discuss books and get their opinions. So hopefully this will be the easiest route for him to just practice the act of writing. He also loves technology, so his blog will also be his technology project for the year. So far, he has just worked with layout and backgrounds, but he is finding new features in blogger he wants to try and ways to utilize his HTML, etc. I'm guessing he will far surpass me in that regard by week 3 of the school year or so. haha. Anyway, I wanted to share that his blog, Reading with Zachary. He is 13 and reads primarily action/adventure/sci-fi in the young adult genre and occasional adult sci-fi if it has been vetted by an adult as okay content wise. He finds some really good ones, so if you or your children have similar tastes, he might offer you some good recommendations. Conversely, maybe he will get some comments of new books he can also try. My question to my homeschooling readers also is what you do for creative assignments for your reluctant writers in the middle school age grouping? Anything interesting?

Do *You* Doodle? Or Write? - Review and ideas

We absolutely love the Do You Doodle? series of coloring books in our house. It gives gray line drawings, or partial drawings, to get a little one started, but not complete pictures. So the pictures have to be completed, often in fun or creative ways. Then they can be colored. That is clearly a step up from the basic coloring books. And the themes are not just licensed characters or simple things, but really creative or fun activities, some making the kids think a bit and some just silly and fun, bringing forth a giggle or two. An example from this week in the book was a line drawing of a boy and the instructions to draw him covered in measles! Or a drawing of a boy in a large box or hole with instructions to draw a way for him to get out. My son, age 7, loves these.

This year we took it a step further though. As background, I have a wonderfully creative, sometimes silly little guy. He loves to tell magical, creative stories full of adventure. But when I ask him to write I'm lucky to get one dull sentence. Without adjectives or adverbs. As dull as he can possibly make it. Ninety-nine percent of writing prompts leave him cold. This year we have tried combining his Do You Doodle? book with his writing notebook with much better success. He can do as many Doodle pages as he wants. Then his assignment is to pick just one and write about his picture. He still has not become some amazing writer here, but I get a lot more detail from him, and some of his creative skill is coming out. Just a tad some days. More other days. But a huge improvement! So if you want some fun and creative writing prompts combined with art, give this book a try.