Writing with Sharon Watson-Easy-to-use Homeschool Writing and Literature Curriculum

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Unlocking the Secrets of Writing and Literature

Practical, easy-to-use writing and literature courses for homeschools, Christian schools, and co-ops by Sharon Watson

Free Grammar Lesson from “Let’s Eat Fifi”

Free Grammar Lesson from “Let’s Eat Fifi”

Lesson 16: When to use “I” and “Me”

Song lyrics are notorious for misusing I and me. Here’s what I mean:

I gaze into the starry sky
And dream each night of you and I.

This corny yet grammatical travesty happens so often that it barely scratches our ears any more.

You already know when to use I and me in simple sentences:

I went to the movie and spilled my drink all over me.

The problem occurs when you are not alone, when you spill your drink on yourself and your friend. Do you use I? Do you use me?

Click here to grab your copy of this whole grammar lesson from “Let’s Eat Fifi,” complete with answers! Or click the button below.

Grammar Lesson Here >>
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3 Types of Poems for Poetry Month

3 Types of Poems for Poetry Month

SHARON’S BLOG

Let’s 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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Symbols of Easter

Symbols of Easter

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

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.

You are hiding Easter eggs of various sizes for young children to find.

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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Focus on Easter with These 7 Spiritual Prompts

Focus on Easter with These 7 Spiritual Prompts

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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National Poetry Month: Do You Haiku?

National Poetry Month: Do You Haiku?

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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How to Develop an Almost Painless Reading List for Teens and Tweens

How to Develop an Almost Painless Reading List for Teens and Tweens

SHARON’S BLOG

 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.

Use a Topic or Theme

A summer reading list is more fun for your tweens and teens if it’s

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Explore Poetry with “Birches” by Robert Frost

Explore Poetry with “Birches” by Robert Frost

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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Use Poetry to Cope with a Traumatic Event

Use Poetry to Cope with a Traumatic Event

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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Repentance

Repentance

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

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 and “The Bells”

Edgar Allan Poe and “The Bells”

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

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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Story Writing: The Resurrection

Story Writing: The Resurrection

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

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.

Point of View

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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National Reading Month: 10 Must-Read Classics for High School

National Reading Month: 10 Must-Read Classics for High School

SHARON’S BLOG

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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Become a Poet

Become a Poet

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

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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Wanted: Cowboy Poets

Wanted: Cowboy Poets

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

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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