Writing with Ease

I borrowed Writing with Ease from the library after finding it recommended in The Well Trained Mind.

Right off the bat I loved the idea of 4 years all contained in one book!  But at the same time, the shear amount of writing suggested  will not go over well with my kids.

The author explains how writing is really a complex process.  First one must have an idea, then put that idea into words, then those words onto the paper.

When you consider all the 'little details' of proper handwriting that is quite a lot of work to add on top of forming ideas.

Which is the reason the book suggests not to require creative writing, nor to correct children's free time writing.

In the book there are several examples of college freshman writing 'awkward' sentences.  The book then describes how diagramming a sentence would show how it 'went wrong' and possibly offer ideas of how to fix it.  I am still not completely sold on diagramming sentences as being the secret to avoiding immature sentences, but I am willing to give it a try.  Unfortunately that sort of lesson is only for the 'logic' phase which isn't until 5th grade. (my 'lawyer of a son has been asking why and arguing his whole life 1`

Logic phase is also a time to learn to outline.  A step I never do.  Not sure how well I can teach something I only do after an essay is written.

In the meantime, I decided to test the kids just to see how well they are doing without a curriculum.  Turns out Dude and Princess can narrate just fine, and their copy work is passable, but they can't handle dictation.  The book mentions kids who have trouble with dictation will have trouble writing down their great story ideas.  Which is exactly the kind of trouble my kids have.

Not to mention if any of the kids knows they will have to write their words they have to spend the extra time figuring out how to say their idea in the least possible number of words!  In someways this is good, succinct writing can be preferable to overly verbose papers.  Other times their idea suffers as they try to squish it down.

My goal is to have them able to put the three steps of writing together in an easier format, without drilling them do death..

So I think we will be putting some of the Writing with Ease lessons into our plan.  We shall test and see if doing the lessons fully offered in the book is enough, or too much drill.  I guarantee I wont be gathering full copywork!