Young Writers Workshop

One of the outstanding events of the summer of 2013 was the Young Writers Workshop I taught, sponsored by the Branson Arts Council.  What an amazing group of talented authors!

Ages 9 and up participated in two sessions for a week-long focus on short forms of writing.  We wrote poems, flash fiction, six-word-memoirs, character sketches, and some pretty crazy journal entries!  The week ended with an author fair, featuring a dozen authors from the Missouri and Arkansas areas, and the students’ work was published in an anthology book for them to keep!

We’re looking forward to doing it again soon, and hope to expand the literary arts in the Ozarks – for young people and the young at heart!

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G is for Grammar

The April Blogging from A to Z Challenge continues!

 

(Photo credit: Leo Reynolds)

I’m not a grammar Nazi, but I definitely appreciate the proper use of common words.

In this age of texting, posting, and tweeting, many people have fallen into the habit of using poor speech – typing as casually as they would yell to someone in the next room.

I typically overlook mistakes in informal conversations online, but bad grammar and misspelled words are appearing in advertising, news reports, headlines, and billboards.  Far from reflecting a laid-back approach to literature, it’s looking like a good education has escaped the people who call themselves professionals.

One local restaurant had a sign advertising their new tilapia dish.  It took six weeks and 3 separate attempts before the sign finally had the correct spelling of tilapia.  (Frankly, I lost my confidence in their ability to cook what they couldn’t spell.)

I had hoped that with the entire world wide web at everyone’s fingertips that the written word would improve.  Surely, there is app for THAT?

What do you think?  Is grammar a big deal or not?  Do you judge a person by their writing presence?

Leave a comment for me, if you please.  Writing is a lonely business.

Also, visit some of the other few thousand bloggers participating in the A to Z challenge by clicking below:

Lapbooking Gets a Video Boost

I’ve been so impressed with the quality of HEDUA’s television series “Life Plus Homeschooling“.  I had the privilege of being a guest for four 20-minute segments, each dealing with a different topic of homeschool life.

Below is one of the completed episodes, “Lapbooking“, which focuses on how educators can incorporate lapbook activities with their literature units .  It was a great opportunity to showcase the literature theme units I authored to accompany Goldminds Publishing‘s YA line of current titles.  The program deals with the following four areas:

• What IS a Lapbook?
• What goes into a Lapbook?
• Where to get materials and ideas
• Throwing out the Test

You can find more in this series at the HEDUA website, or here on my blog!

I wrote a series of articles dealing with many of these topics, which you can find through the following links:

Related articles

• Hitting the Books in Homeschooling
• Journaling Your Way to An Education
• Classical Method, Modern Approach
• Unschooling Explained
• What Is the Charlotte Mason Method?
• Teaching With Unit Studies

Many thanks to the film production crew and the gang at HEDUA for sharing the wealth of information about homeschooling with the public, and for utilizing technology to help all of us learn more.