A World of Difference
With Angie, who organized the Muslim Homeschool Network Conference
Hi Julie,
I hope you’re doing well! We miss you out here in Sunny SoCal!! 🙂
I just wanted to share with you (and please share with Rita Cevasco as well!) our struggle, in hopes that it will help other families.
Last year around this time my then 6 year old was a reluctant writer. She knew how to write letters but hated holding a pencil. I would hear the common complaints like “it hurts my hands” or “it’s boring” etc. …Not to mention my 6 year old was reading far beyond her age, reading classics with advanced vocabulary and I was stunned that she was doing amazingly with reading and struggling so much with writing?! I was baffled.
Finally, a friend introduced me to Brave Writer! After a few Julie scopes and exploring the website I was hooked. We started with Jot It Down. My daughter was telling me funny poems, writing stories, and asking me to jot down all sorts of writing that seemed to be exploding out of her imagination! Her writing voice was beautiful. I was thrilled and so was she!
Then we got to the mechanics. I assumed since her reading level was beyond her 6.5 years, that A Quiver of Arrows would be the right fit. She loved Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Charlotte’s Web and had read them multiple times. I had skimmed through The Wand but Hop on Pop and Amelia Bedelia were not where she was reading at all so I just ignored The Wand all together. And this was my mistake, READING LEVEL DOES NOT EQUAL WRITING LEVEL!! …Most of the words during French dictation were misspelled no matter how many times we looked them over. I was stressed, she was annoyed, so I backed off.
At that time I was thinking that maybe this curriculum wasn’t a good fit for some reason, but then I decided to give The Wand a shot… and it was the perfect fit! The sentences were simple and short enough that she felt confident doing the copywork. Spelling was fun with the post-it notes and hands-on activities. My daughter was loving it. Over the course of the year, her spelling improved dramatically and she was now loving picking up a pencil and writing her thoughts, lists, stories, notes to her father and I, and even journaling her favorite trips ON HER OWN?!? My mind was blown. It took us a year or so to finish all 3 levels and its has made a WORLD of difference. She has recently started learning cursive after begging me to get her a cursive writing book.
Thank you and thank Rita for me as well. I never thought such a different mind set and simply unique curriculum could make such a difference but it really has made a world of difference. As a new homeschooler, this was GOLD and I wholeheartedly recommend the Jot it Down + the Wand to anyone who has a struggling writer!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart!!
Angie
Great news! Rita Cevasco’s book, Trees in the Forest: Growing Readers and Writers through Deep Comprehension, is on sale now through April 30, 2017 (learn more about Rita’s book)!
Take 30% off your purchase using this discount code:
