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Practical, easy-to-use writing and literature courses for homeschools, Christian schools, and co-ops by Sharon Watson
Looking for basketball-related writing prompts? Whether your students are sports enthusiasts or not, there’s something for everyone here!
Have you ever seen tournament brackets like the one in #1? Free printable included.
Fun for students in 5th – 12th grade. Dig in!
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People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. ~Rogers Hornsby (former Major League baseball player)
A sure sign of spring is baseball.
Or spring peepers and sighting the first robin.
Maybe it’s when you
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Do you hear that thunder? It’s the crash of schoolbooks slamming shut for the summer.
As a parent, you want your children to continue using their reading skills. You know there are so many wonderful books they would enjoy reading now that it is summer and the distractions are fewer. Treasures await them. Do you have a plan to make it happen?
If not, you can use mine.
A summer reading list is more fun for your tweens and teens if it’s
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Would you like to give your students some practice in writing poetry?
With these guided prompts, your students do not have to “sit down and write a poem” but will surprise you by creating something fun and maybe even memorable. Here goes . . .
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SHARON’S BLOG
All this month we’re celebrating National Poetry Month with famous poems worth knowing. Be sure to check out the many links at the end of this post for more poetry appreciation and practice!
What is today’s poem? Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” Here are the first two lines:
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
SHARON’S BLOG
Have you ever come across something unusual and wondered how it got that way?
Robert Frost in his poem “Birches” does just that. He finds some birches in the woods that are bent down and wonders what happened to make them curve down. Did a boy come by and climb them, bending them down? Did an ice storm overwhelm the branches?
Then he remembers swinging on birch trees when he was a youngster, and he misses the little boy he once was. He misses the enjoyment of being young and swinging on birches.
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SHARON’S BLOG
Are you looking for a way to focus your students’ minds and hearts on the meaning of Easter?
Our special Easter prompts will help your students think deeply on the events and meaning of our dear Savior’s death and resurrection.
These 7 prompts are arranged chronologically from Jesus’ Triumphal Entry through Thomas’s epiphany a week after the resurrection.
Included are prompts with poetry, story writing, definitions, opinions, and more.
Suitable for students in grades 7 – 12.
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SHARON’S BLOG
Has something traumatic ever happened to you or your family?
When Anne Bradstreet’s house burned down, she was heartbroken and wrote a poem about it. Read her poem below in which she pours out her grief, her pain upon losing everything, and what she learned from this terrible situation.
What is unusual about this poem is that Anne’s house burned in 1666, at a time when many people did not value poetry and did not take the time or have the time to write it. Also, it is very unusual that a woman of that time would have been recognized as a poet and have her poems published.
Anne was the wife of Simon Bradstreet, a governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her work became so famous that her poems were printed in London as well. High praise, indeed, for a Puritan woman of that era.
Here’s her poem titled “Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 18th, 1666.” You’ll notice that some of the capitalization and spelling is different from ours today:
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Eggs have long been symbols of spring and of Easter. They represent new life and new beginnings.
So does Jesus’ resurrection. Death has been conquered! There is new life in Jesus.
Inside each plastic egg is a jelly bean and a little object that represents part of the Last Supper, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. In other words, each object stands for a different part of the Easter account, like these: events, people, food, places where the events took place, truths, and so on.
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There are many gut-wrenching parts to the death of Jesus and his resurrection.
One is how Judas, a “friend” for three years, hands Jesus over to his enemies—with a sign of affection.
Another is when Jesus willingly steps into a rigged trial, one He knows He will lose.
Another troubling part of this account is when Peter, Jesus’ right-hand man, denies knowing Jesus even after he’s been warned that he will deny him. You can read about this in Mark 14:27-31 and Mark 14:66-72.
Jesus knows what Peter is doing. In fact, the Bible says that while Jesus is being mistreated in the house of the high priest, he turns and looks “straight at Peter” (Luke 22:61 NIV). At that point, Peter remembers the warning Jesus gave him, and he runs out of the courtyard and weeps “bitterly.”
The amazing part of Peter’s betrayal is that
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Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. Though that is over 200 years ago, we still read his work today.
He’s famous for his short stories and for poems like “The Raven.” (You know, that “Nevermore” poem.)
In an essay, Poe explained how he was very careful to choose just the right words for how they sound and for the effect he was trying to achieve. You’ll see that he was very successful in his poem “The Bells,” which is rich with writer’s devices.
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April is National Poetry Month. What a wonderful time to try your hand at writing a poem!
Haiku (high KOO) is a beautiful poem form that comes from Japan. It is usually about nature and can be spoken in one breath.
Syllables are important in a haiku. Words can be broken into parts based on their vowel sounds. Those parts are syllables. Tree has one syllable. Forest has two. And timberland has three. When you speak these words out loud, you can hear their syllables.
Haiku poems have another feature: They do not rhyme.
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Let’s write a fun poem to celebrate National Poetry Month!
A diamante (Dee-a-MON-tay) is an interesting type of poem. It is a diamond-shaped poem of opposites, and the last word in the poem is the opposite of the first word.
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Gloom. Despair. Grief. Fear.
There was a violent earthquake. Angels. Soldiers who fainted.
Then—joy! Amazement! Rejoicing!
This week is Holy Week for Christians. We remember and celebrate Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, Last Supper, trial, death, and resurrection.
The historical accounts of the resurrection in the Bible mention
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This week is Holy Week for Christians. We remember and celebrate Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, Last Supper, trial, death, and resurrection.
All the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) have accounts of the resurrection, but none of the accounts are written in first person.
First-person point of view is when the narrator is telling the story, like this: “I saw the angels,” “I walked up to the tomb,” or “When we saw that it was empty, he went in and I backed away.”
The disciple John, when mentioning himself, writes of himself in third person as “the other disciple,” like this: “So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first” (John 20: 3-4). What would his story be like if he had written it in first person?
Many people are mentioned in the accounts of the resurrection: Mary Magdalene and other women, guards, angels, disciples such as Peter and John, chief priests, Cleopas and the other man walking to Emmaus, and Doubting Thomas. What story could they tell?
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I’ve had a long and strange relationship with the classics.
In 8th grade, our English class read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, but I could never figure out what the red “A” stood for.
As an Christian adult, I developed the inexplicable idea that reading fiction was a waste of time. I should read only religious or self-help books . . . until I became so ill that I was bored out of my skull for one month lying on the couch. Then I turned to the only fiction book in our tiny trailer: a complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, which seemed appropriate for someone with the last name of Watson.
I was hooked, and I never looked back.
(Well, there was that one time when I resisted reading George Eliot’s Silas Marner because I mistook “Marner” for “Mariner,” and I have a dislike for sea-going stories but then read it and it became one of my FAVORITES! But that is another story.)
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Do you have children or students who like to read but don’t have time?
How can you engender a love of reading in your home, even with reluctant readers?
Let’s create an atmosphere in our homes in which reading is not only possible but also enjoyable.
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Has your sports team ever lost a game? And did you write about it in a poem?
You didn’t?
Well, Ernest Thayer did in the now-famous poem “Casey at the Bat.” You can read the history of the poem and the poem itself here.
October 2 is National Poetry Day, and recently the theme was “Remembering,” in which amateur and famous poets write to remember a special moment or a meaningful time in their lives.
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Treasure Island. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frankenstein. Pride and Prejudice.
What books should everyone read?
To celebrate National Reading Month in the United States, Amazon posted “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.” What books do they think everyone should read? Here’s a sampling from their list,
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Heifers. Cowpokes. Cottonwoods. Hullabaloo.
What do these words have in common? Well, if you were a cowboy poet, you would know!
The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is held in Elko, Nevada, each year. Singers and poets compete, attend workshops, and dance. Watch Randy Rieman recite his humorous poem about being “throwed” from a bronco here.
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SHARON’S BLOG
Snow-softened landscape. Frozen lakes. Sledding. Hot chocolate.
Blizzards. Ice-slick streets. Cancellations.
Winter—it’s all in there. Here are a few prompts about winter that your students will enjoy, giving them a chance to write their opinions, a short story, a TV script, and more.
Just right for your 5th – 12th graders.
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