TOS Homeschool Crew Review~  Write Shop Primary Book A

We loved  Write Shop’s Story Builders so when there was talk of  the Crew getting a chance to review another product from Write Shop, I was pretty excited.

Write Shop Primary is one of the latest products from 

Write Shop   but this time it’s designed for the very youngest of writers in grades K-3. It starts off with the very basics, allowing kids to dictate to the parent with very simple Guided Writing Practice. I realize this is product is for young children, but Tink really needed something that started with the very basics. This writing curriculum fit the bill and I wanted to give it a try.

Since I’d always liked the Charlotte Mason philosophy of homeschooling, I never thought my kiddos would need a beginning writing program such as this, but as it turns out, my kiddos certainly seem to. Wish I’d found it sooner.

We were able to easily customize the lessons to beef it up for Tink. At first, I was writing everything down, just like the instructions say, but soon she was asking to write the “stories” herself. Yay! It wasn’t long ago that this would not be something she would ask to do. We also did the “Flying Higher” options to add more story writing practice for Tink. What’s neat is there is also a “Smaller Steps” option for a child who needs a bit more help.

The beginning of the book offers plenty of instruction on how to use it and how to schedule the lessons for a child who is at the younger end of the recommended grade levels or one who is older, and even how to use it with more than one child.

Write Shop also sent us the  Activity Set Worksheet Pack to use along with the lessons. I thought Tink would be bored but she liked them quite a bit.

There are suggested picture books to read with the lesson themes listed at the back of the book. I think picture books really make learning come alive for very young students. We didn’t use them with Tink, but if I were going to use this product with a younger student, I would definitely be using the book selections.

The teacher’s manual also suggests “publishing” your child’s work with cute little projects like putting them on a kite for example. That’s definitely something I never would have thought of! Lol.

Okay, now before I finish, let me be sure to make something straight here: I don’t think I would normally recommend this product for a child Tink’s age but she really needed to start from the very beginning and have fun with the idea of writing. We’d had a couple of flops in the area of writing curriculum and she really got upset at the idea of having to practice writing. She really needed something easy and fun. We were both so blessed with the opportunity to try out this very basic writing curriculum. It felt more like a game than “school work”.

I’m excited that this curriculum was something that Tink really liked and I’m putting the next two Write Shop Primary books at the top of the list for writing curriculum for Tink. Book A really made the idea of writing accessible to her. She was no longer afraid of doing it “wrong”. I’m looking forward to trying out books B and C once they’re released.

Please be sure to read what my fellow Crew members thought of this curriculum here.