Happily Homeschooling

Review for WriteShop StoryBuilders

WRITESHOP STORYBUILDERS REVIEW

Today’s review is about an interesting company that offers E-books that encourage and inspire children to write stories. The company is WriteShop and the E-books are called StoryBuilders.

I received the World of Animals and World of Sports StoryBuilder e-books to review. I’ll tell you a little about the company then on to the products.

WriteShop – It all started when 2 homeschool moms had decided to offer a writing class to older students. They researched programs and found all of them, though good, to be lacking something. They ended up developing their own program which is WriteShop. WriteShop originally was created for Junior High and High School students to develop writing skills, but now there are many more products and even young children can begin to develop great writing skills. If you’d like to read more about how this all started, go here.

Now on to the products we reviewed! – THIS IS SO FUN!

The WriteShop StoryBuilders series is designed to give the students (and parents) a “jumpstart” on creating a story. Each of the E-book’s come with cards that can be printed that contain the basics of a story: character, character trait, setting, and plot. Each element has specific pages that can be printed and cut into flashcards. The e-books we received contain 192 black printed cards to be printed on colored paper/cardstock, and 192 colored printed cards to be printed on white paper/cardstock. Once printed there are different suggestions given on how to play or get started. When we first started we chose to print the words out on colored paper and use them like cards "pick a card any card". Both kids (8 and 13) did this with each of the four elements. Then I gave them a few minutes to think of a story and then, one at a time, went up and told their story. We had so much fun! Examples of words that my son chose are: rat, barn, unexpected guest, picky. The story he created: the rat came home from the store and found an unexpected guest in the barn. It was a cat. Very simple, but that was only the beginning of the fun. We were able to create all types of stories.

I like this product for several reasons. The first is that it isn’t always easy to start a story from scratch. Who should the main character be - is the story happy, sad, a mystery - when does it take place, and so on. With StoryBuilders, the student has a starting point and can add as much or as little as he wants. The next reason I like this is it encourages the student to be creative. As we continued this program, we changed how we did things and would add a theme to the story. This was harder, especially, for example, if you take the above words and used the dramatic theme. The rat placed his hands to his mouth and gasped. What he saw brought a lump to his throat and fear in his eyes.  He wanted to run but his legs had become heavy and his feet seemed stuck to the barn floor. The unexpected guest lunged forward with a gleam in its eye and then…fell at the rat’s feet, rubbing his head across the rat’s legs and began to purr. Silly, yes, but this definitely inspires creativity.  The third reason I like this is because we are involved in Debate & Speech through NCFCA. This class/club teaches students how to publicly speak and debate. We have learned how difficult it is create speeches, even when we have the given style. It is also very hard for the kids to publicly speak. I found StoryBuilders perfect for getting the kids to loosen up and enjoy getting up in front of the “class” to tell their story.  

StoryBuilders is very reasonably priced at only $7.95.

There are several other products that WriteShop has available, too. You can view them at their website.

You can also read the other reviews written by my team members. There are some that received different books to review. Check it out here.