Nanowrimo Young Writer’s Program, and Homeschooling…

I want to start by saying that I am not a homeschooler. I have certainly thought about it in the past, and it’s something I wouldn’t mind trying at some point in the future, but for now my son goes to a great school, (and my daughter is VERY excited to be starting next year!) and lets face it, I get more writing done without them at home 😉

But doing the YWP with my son had shown me how useful it could be, on so many levels for homeschoolers. Maths, as we work out the overall word count, and how many words need to be written each day. More maths, as DS counts his words-so-far each day, and works out how many more he has to write. There’s spelling as he tries to write new words, and synonyms as we discuss using different words to mean the same thing. Come December there’ll be grammer too, when we go over his story for a proper edit. There’s art and drawing, as he draws pictures of his characters and their home (see above picture). 🙂

We could start in October – using the YWP Workbooks that are downloadable from the site. These guide YWP participants in what makes a novel, and how to develop and plot out their own.  We could start the month by reading a novel, noting the characters, the points of conflict, and resolve, then work on his own book, the planning for that. It could involve research of another topic, which in turn leads to more literacy and numeracy as he encounters new words.

On the other hand, trying to keep my son focused for more than 20 mins is proving difficult, and I wonder how I would deal with that on a daily basis.

DS will be away over the weekend, so he wrote 157 words today, in various stints and with various incentives (the one that worked – money – he wants to take his pocket money with him on the weekend, and I said he had to reach 150 words!)

Total word count DS: 507,

Me: 16,395

Are there any other homeschoolers reading this, who are doing the YWP with your children? I’d love to hear from you!

And don’t forget, I have three more copies of The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton to give away this month, all you have to do to get your name in the draw is comment on any post!  (For more info check out this post)