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Grading Essays Made Easy |Homeschool Life | Literature | Miscellaneous
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Writing/Teaching Tips | All
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Want homeschool writing tips? Encouragement? Help grading those essays? Practical advice for your homeschool writing class? Insights into literature? Free writing prompts and tutorials?
Whether your student is reluctant or brimming with excitement, you’ll find solid, proven ideas here that will make your teaching life easier. And take advantage of the many writing prompts and tutorials posted here.
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Be sure and browse the weekly writing prompts for middle schoolers and high schoolers.
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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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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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Strengthen Your Friendships with a Friendship Journal
SHARON’S BLOG
Jonathan and David. Anne Shirley and Diana Barry. Calvin and Hobbes. Those are some epic friendships!
The Bible has a lot to say about friendships. It warns us against foolish ones: “Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character” (I Corinthians 15:33). Scripture encourages us that a “friend loves at all times” (Proverbs 17:17).
Friendship is important to God. How important is friendship to you?
If we want to make new friends, we have to show ourselves friendly. As Dale Carnegie, the famous philanthropist revealed, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” That’s a challenge in a new group or situation, isn’t it?
Whether you have a new friend or a friend you’ve known since kindergarten, communication is important to the relationship.
A fun way to keep communication open is with a friendship journal. It’s a simple concept: You both answer a question in a journal and share your journal back and forth. You can make your own journal from a spiral-bound notebook or make your own book.
Full Steam Ahead: Steam Power in Ancient Roman Days?
SHARON’S BLOG
We like to think we’re fairly intelligent today, but did you know that the ancient Greeks and Romans harnessed the power of steam and wind 2,000 years ago?
Your students will enjoy these three prompts based on history and technology as they contemplate Hero of Alexandria, an ancient Thomas Edison, and how his inventions might have changed the world.
Random fact: Did you know that Hero invented the first vending machine? Patrons put in a coin and received holy water from his machine!
This week we’ve included plenty of links so your students can dig more deeply into these topics, if they wish.
Geared for middle – high school students.
