Writing ... is it your Identity?

On Being a Writer asks me this question:
What is my identity?   Do I identify myself as a writer?

I have to admit, I find that a hard question to answer.  

Just One Thing

I keep thinking back to the writer's conference and what I could take away from it.  Do you know why?   I don't want to waste the learning.  If I don't think about it and write about it, and keep the notes ready...then in three months it won't have mattered that I went...and wouldn't that have been a waste of hard-earned dollars!?!?!  Not my thing at all!

I keep coming back to a line I kept hearing.  Set a goal, just a singular goal.  Just change ONE thing.  Don't do more than that.  Just one thing, one style, one character, one setting, one social media.  Learn to do that one thing and do that one thing well.  Then do one more thing.

So instead of looking at five things you want to do and (or in my case a million and a half things)....and feeling totally overwhelmed and stumped.   You break that down into ONE thing.  And yes, try to keep it to the ONE thing.  And yes.. I know .. it's really hard to do that.  Perhaps we can practice together?  :)

Art Book: StickerBomb Journal Galaxy

Know what I was doing the other day?   Cleaning off book shelves.  Oh my!  It was amazing the books I pulled off and said "I don't need to keep this book".  So out it went.   A good 10 of them were space exploration books, my son is done exploring space so they headed off to the book sale.

When I brought in the mail, this little gem was in the packet from Raincoast.  I looked and thought hmm.. odd little sticker book and then I REALLY looked at it and noticed..it's not a sticker book, it has sticker for personalization, but it's really a journal.   How cool would this have been for my boy to use while we were studying space!!

He could have jotted down notes, drawn pictures, pasted in images and what not.  It would have been all contained in one neat looking space oriented journal.

The page quality is wonderful.  Thick without being cumbersome, and 128 pages!!!   So much room seriously!    Even if you didn't want to use it as part of a study, it's a great journal just for jotting down notes and what not. 

Four pages of stickers are included to personalize the cover.  That's over 100 stickers to use to make this journal your own.   I didn't test to see if the stickers can be removed and reapplied, so if getting it you'd need to test that out on your own. 

My thoughts:
It's a really nice journal, geared toward children, that would be just lovely for jotting down thoughts, or using as a notebooking spot when doing a space unit study.  :)

StickerBomb Journal: Galaxy 
Designed by SRK
Published by Laurence King
Pages: 128
Age: any
Approximately 6 x 8 inches.

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books

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Language Arts: Our Style

Welcome to the Virtual Curriculum Fair 2017 week two.  This week we talk all about language arts, how one plays around with words.   Our host is the lovely Susan.  You can learn more about the VFCF2017 right here.

I have to admit, it took a while to figure out a system to study Language Arts in our home.
Knowing that my boy (like his mother) tells stories as easily as breathing I thought, why not use that.

So I grabbed this freebie book from the library discard pile and off we set.

First he needs to draw a picture of the story he wants to write.  He spent days at this, getting all the details right and NO, I'm not allowed to show you.  :)

 Then you develop your main character.  This was harder than the lad anticipated.  He thought he could just do yellow, pointed ears character.   Then I asked : so how tall is he?   Does he eat meat or vegetables?   What makes him laugh?   Does he ever cry?   Does he have friends or is he a loner?

Once he had the character nailed down a bit better he moved on to writing his story.  Bit by bit he adds to it.  And bit by bit he learns.  Every day a 1/2 hour of work is required.

Each time he gets a chapter done, we sit down and we edit it together.  We make the changes right in his story, discussing spelling errors, word usage, sentence structure and all that fun stuff.

And you know what?   He's learning.  It's not a battle.  It's a sitting down and talking and learning together.  Sometimes I'll read a sentence and not know what it wrong with it, so I'll ask other folks and they'll show me what's wrong and then the lad and I both learn something new.

It's good to do this.  :)

I have to admit, I getting curious about what treasure his character is going to discover...

Anyways, this book has a variety of stories one can write out, from adventures to mysteries.
Draw it out, write it out chapter by chapter and just work your way through it.   We'll be working our way through it for a good time to come yet.  :)

I admit that we are taking our time with it, and we did get side-tracked when I was ill so are rather behind, but a new week is dawning and a lad will learn and grow, and I'll be there with him.

This post is part of the Virtual Curriculum Fair.   I do hope that you'll join us in reading through what some of us have put together.   Here's the list of the gang.  :)

Please visit my fellow homeschool bloggers who are writing about Playing with Words this week:

All posts will be live by Monday, January 9th at noon EST.

Delight Directed High School English by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds

Act Your Part Well- 2017 VCF by Lisa @ Golden Grasses

The Search For Language by Michele@Family, Faith and Fridays

Our Top Picks for Language Arts by Amanda H @ Hopkins Homeschool

Multiple Approaches to Language Arts in 2017 by Laura @ Day by Day in Our World

How We Cover the Language Arts in Our Homeschool by Joelle @ Homeschooling for His Glory

Use Your Words by Laura @ Four Little Penguins

The Art of Perfecting Macarons by Jennifer @ A Glimpse of Our Life

Loving Languages Every Day by Jen K @ A Peace of Mind

Speech Therapy & Elementary Latin by Yvie @ Gypsy Road

The Readin' and Writin' Part of Homeschool by Shecki @ Greatly Blessed

Children Who Love Books by Lizzy @ Peaches At Home

Customizing High School Language Credits by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool

A Poetry Feast by Sarah @ Delivering Grace

Teaching Language Arts without Curriculum by Brittney @ Mom's Heart

I know your pain and it is worth it! by Kim @ Good Sweet Love

Language Arts: Our Style by Annette @ A Net in Time

Words! Words! Words! by Lisa M @McClanahan 7

10 Wonderful Word Games (+1) by Lori @ At Home: where life happens

What About Reading Comprehension? by Kristen @ Sunrise to Sunset

Teaching Grammar and Writing Through Discussion by Chelli @ The Planted Trees

Kindergarten Resources

Thanks to Carla at Reflections of the Times I have a few new resources options for when Justin is ready to start some "official" schooling time.

Handwriting for Kids all types of helps here for teaching handwriting, basic math etc. Sheets to print off. Can even do some of your own stuff. :)

She listed off three books available through Christian Books.com
Noah Webster's Reading Handbook
Hearts and hands
The World God Made

Good books from the sounds of it. Things I can keep my eyes open for.

Reading Resources

Five books on-line (these are samples) geared for different age levels. All you have to do is provide your email address in order to read them. Seems at this point, a good resource for reading helps. Site is called Raz-kids.

Reading a-z.com has all types of samples to look at. Check it out here. I have to admit, I don't quite get the alphabetized level thing yet, but in time it will come to me. :)

I have to admit, I haven't thoroughly checked this out yet. It is supposed to be a help for writing.

Some blogs entries to consider a bit further

I liked this one from School of thought as it gave good answers to why people are concerned about homeschooling vs public schooling.

Heart of Harmony helps us consider steps to take when making a child's garden.

I can't say that poetry is my thing, and I think I will find teaching it a tad bit difficult, but teach poetry I shall at least attempt. This post from Higher up and Further talks about poetic narration (whatever that is)

Free math worksheets (PDF format) at Twaddle-free math handouts.

High Desert hi-jinks brings a post on resources for doing a fox study.

My Domestic Church has a recommendation for using material from Bravewriter. Sounds like it might be a good program to use.

Handwriting Helps

This Old Schoolhouse sends out emails to me every week. They often have a great deal of good information in them. Today's email contained places to find help with teaching children good handwriting skills.

These are the links

ready for kindergarten. This page lists a bunch of different activities to help children learn skills they need in order to perform other skills later. Good resource I think.

ABC teach. This site allows a person to download pages to help with learning how to print and write. Saves a person time in having to create these pages on their own. In the long run, this is a paid for service site, but they do have some pages listed for free.

Handwriting Worksheets. The URL in this page seems to indicate that is also comes from the ABC teach page, but the page is set up differently. Whether it is or not, free pages saves me time and energy in making them myself.

ESL Writing Wizard brings us this site on writing in Paragraphs.

Handwriting for Kids. Basic copying pages for children to learn good style in printing.

I managed to continue this theme by doing a search on my own.

Young Minds Handwriting Practice Sheets. Some of their items have been discontinued on-line and need to be purchased, but they contain more than the practice your letters pages. They have some "pre-writing" pages as well.

Tracer pages is a rather neat site. They allow you to make differently themed pages using different styles of printing. I never knew that there were different styles before. Apparently there is Zaner-Bloser, d'nealian, and cursive. Cursive I knew but the other two I did not.

Handwriting Pages is a site the is a compilation of handwriting pages on the web. I have not looked through all the sites, the ones I saw looked either useless or okay.

Alphabet Printable Materials this site looks promising.

Handwriting worksheets has this to say about itself

Print the Handwriting Worksheets to make a handwriting book for each letter of the alphabet. For each letter, there are 5 different printable handwriting worksheets for 2 styles of writing. The first five are Zaner Bloser style, the next five are D'Nealian style. Print the handwritng worksheets and bind together to make a book.

There were lots more pages that I could examine, but I figured this gave me a place to start.
We are as of yet, a couple years away from printing, and at least four from writing. :)

Scott Foresman Online Grammar & Writing Handbook

My thanks to Sprittibee for pointing my way to this site.
As Sprittibee says

The Scott Foresman Online Grammar and Writing Handbook (a FREE curriculum) this week. We started using it yesterday and I really like it! .......The worksheets are quality PDF files and you can print them by section from a neatly organized table of contents.

Reading and writing

Though this website, Family Friendly Sites, I found this site, Mrs Plum. It has some games for helping children learn their letters, words and such like.