Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew
The homeschool year is almost finished for us (we finish at the end of May). But, my daughter (10) has been finished her Language Arts coursebook for a little while now. She is a creative girl who loves to craft, draw, and write. She is even working on a short story book with some friends right now! So when the opportunity arose to review Sparkling Bits Of Writing Book 1 from Creative Word Studio, I gladly accepted! I wanted her to be able to continue with her creative writing even after our school year ends. This book will definitely help with that!
What do you get?
The book comes as a spiral-bound paperback, with laminated cover pages. It feels well put together, and the wide spiral binding means that you can easily open and “fold” to the page you want to work on. For us, this is a definite plus. With three children and all of their supplies, there often isn’t a lot of room at the table. Not having to have the book fully open across the table is helpful. It also makes it easy to use anywhere, not just at the table.
Inside you will find 75 creative writing lessons, made up of 3 different types of lessons: Free Writing, Reading Responses, and Mini Writing Lesson exercises.
Free Writing
The free writing exercises are used to help the student become comfortable with writing whatever they want. They write non-stop for about 8-10 minutes, writing whatever comes to their mind. These lessons have a prompt, picture, poem, or question to respond to, this helps to get your child’s creative “juices” flowing.
Reading Responses
These lessons have your child analyzing other people’s writings. This helps to develop critical thinking skills in your student.
Mini Writing Exercises
These are FUN, new, out-of-the-box writing exercises.
Special Symbols
Occasionally you will find some of the writing activities labelled with a star symbol. This means it is a “Gold Piece”. These are lessons that the student is meant to edit and polish until they’ve perfected and are satisfied with their work. These are wonderful pieces to grade and add to your child’s portfolio.
The other symbol you might find on the lessons is a “friend” symbol, which looks like some cogs with two people. This means the lesson will require your child to grab a friend (a sibling or parent would work also), and they will do the lesson together.
How We Are Using It
Sparkling Bits of Writing Book 1 is meant to be used as a supplement to your other school work. In our case, since my daughter has already finished her language arts course for the school year, I had her work on lessons a few times a week as a fun writing exercise. I’ve been letting her pick and choose the lesson she’d like to work on each day, so she has been jumping around in the book, doing the lessons that appeal to her the most first. She had been enjoying the fun exercises and will continue to work on the lessons into our summer break as well, to keep up with her creative writing.
Our Conclusions
We love this creative writing workbook! It has so many fun ideas and prompts to get your child writing more freely. I would recommend it as a great supplement to your homeschool, especially if you have a keen writer!
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