How to Homeschool a Kid Who Hates to Write ~
Written by Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs. Darcy

For whatever reason, some kids hate to write.

I don’t mean they dislike it, or they’d rather not today, thank you. No, I’m talking about those kids for whom writing “The cat sat on the mat,” requires the physical effort and mental stamina of climbing Pike’s Peak (but probably with a lot more fussing, whining, crying and arguing).

These kids aren’t faking: writing is genuinely difficult for them. (Especially when they’re young, and especially for boys.)

Your challenge as a teacher, a parent, and an academic coach is to keep their disdain for handwriting from turning into a hatred of school, which happens all too often because the thing they hate most (handwriting) permeates every subject.

Thankfully, most writing haters get over it–without intervention–by 4th or 5th grade.

But until then, these tips will help you — and your child — cope.

9 Tips: How to Homeschool a Kid who Hates to Write

1. As far as you can, eliminate the writing in every subject but writing. 

The goal is simply to master the material.

2. Do the work out loud.

Instead of written worksheets, try oral drills for math facts, phonics, translations, fill-in-the-blanks, paragraph summaries, etc. Or, do the worksheet but do it out loud.

3. Use stickers.

If your child is completing a worksheet, try writing the answers on small stickers in advance. Your student can then place the correct sticker in the appropriate spot for his answer. (This has the advantage of feeling like a game.)

4. Make it a matching game.

With a little advance work on your part, your child can match up Spanish nouns with their meanings, coins with their names, states with their capitals, dates with historical facts, and anything else you can think of.

5. Play “secretary” for your student.

They dictate, you record. This lets your creative child get their stories, summaries, or science observations out of their head and onto paper.

6. Get creative with spelling word practice.

To practice “writing” spelling words, let your child “spell” the words with his finger in a shallow container of rice, sand, beans, or water. No paper or pencil required.

7. Consider starting typing early.

We started our pencil-hating kids on a typing program at age seven (at their request!), but kids as young as five can begin typing lessons.

8. When your kid must write, equip them with coping strategies to help them handle it better, or let them find their own.

My writing-haters self-soothed by swinging, spinning and sprinting down the driveway, preferably before and after handwriting time.

9. Make the writing easier:

• Switch to markers or smoothly gliding pens.
• Ditch the paper for a dry erase board.

These tips and tricks require a little extra work on your part to implement.

But if your writing hater still loves school (well, except for handwriting class) I hope you’ll agree with me: it’s worth it.

Do you have (or have you had) a student who hates to write? We need your tips, tricks and coping strategies!

Finding the right resource for your homeschool at the right time is a breath of fresh air. It can feel like the missing link, the answer you’ve been looking for, the perfect fit as you enter a new season.

In our home this year, Trishna (10) and Jonathan (9) have moved solidly into a new period of learning, called Love of Learning Phase. (If the phases of learning are new to you, you can find an overview here.)

This new phase has come with increased interest in academics, and therefore, more work for this mama as I try to keep up with them!

Through that work, we’ve come across six resources that are currently working really well in our home. Here they are in case they might work for you, too.

1. Little Passports

I’ve had my eye on Little Passports for a while, so I was excited to try it out as one of their affiliates. It hasn’t disappointed us!

Each month we journey the world alongside the imaginary characters of Sam and Sofia. In the mail once a month a package arrives containing worksheets, postcards, little trinkets, and a “boarding pass” for online games they can do relating to that month’s country.

What an awesome, fun way to learn geography–the kids and I love it! As well as the world edition, Little Passports has a USA version too. It explores two states each month.

The website recommends the world version for ages 5 to 10 and the USA version for ages 7 to 12.

2. Teaching Cursive! This Method Works

I invited Trishna to learn cursive with me this year, and since she loves all things writing she gave an excited yes to the idea. So I started an online search to find the best way to teach her. I wanted a really simple method that would allow us to make a little progress each day.

We totally scored with our discovery of Teaching Cursive! This Method Works by Linda Corson. A simple, spiral-bound book, it starts with the easiest strokes and letters and proceeds to more difficult ones.

The lessons (56 in total) take only 10-15 minutes a day, and that has also been a great fit. It’s long enough to learn something, but not enough to feel overwhelming.

This book contains the instructions/syllabus for teaching – your child doesn’t write in it, making it good to use with multiple children. I enjoy these lessons, too (& that matters for keeping up the inspiration value in our home!)

3. Learning Ally

Learning Ally, a God-send resource for our family, popped into our lives at exactly the right time. I had been praying for a tool that would help my daughter fall more deeply in love with books. She enjoys picture books, but due to a visual impairment needs large print to read.

Most chapter books for kids use standard small print, so that left her unable to read them independently. She isn’t ready for her own Kindle yet, so I had been on the hunt for something to help us through these middle years.

Then we stumbled onto Learning Ally and hallelujah! We found exactly what we needed. It’s an audio book resource for adults or children with visual impairments or dyslexia. Designed with those two groups in mind, you need a doctor’s note confirming your child’s diagnosis.

Once the proper forms have been completed and you’ve paid the annual fee, you have access to an entire library of over 75,000 books (!)–from young child through adult–to download and listen to on iPad, phone, wherever. Love this so much.

4. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

I plan to write more about this book soon, but thought it deserves a quick mention here. This scripted, formulaic approach to reading is not something I ever saw myself using as an interest-led learning mama, yet it has been the perfect fit for my Elijah (8).

And isn’t that what matters most?!

We started just over two months ago, and he’s already on lesson 80! Initially we tackled two lessons a day because of the letter sounds and combinations he already knew. Now that we’ve moved on to the more intense lessons, we’ve scaled back to one a day. He’s on track to finish before Christmas!

5. The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name

I’ve read the Bible all my life, and have read Bible stories for years to my little people. Yet this is the first children’s Bible that has actually made me tear up mid-sentence.

What an inspiring way to show how the Bible works together as one book, how it all connects and points to Jesus!

Stunningly beautiful and highly recommended.

6. Project Feederwatch

An overview:

“Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America.

FeederWatchers periodically count the birds they see at their feeders from November through early April and send their counts to Project FeederWatch. FeederWatch data help scientists track broadscale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution.”

This year’s bird count began earlier this month, but it’s not too late to join in! They ship kits out through February and counts can be submitted through April. This is open to bird watchers in both the US and Canada.

We’re having such fun identifying the birds at our feeder, counting them, and then reporting them via the online tracking system.

How about you? What resources have been working well and enhancing the love of learning in your home?

The idea came to me while I was busy making a list of what the kids needed for summer camp. Why not create a lunch menu they could order from?

It would be fun, yes, but with the added bonus that they would write their order down–thereby encouraging summer handwriting practice.

I had no idea I’d stumbled upon such a hit! Later in the week even the teachers at camp said, “So tell us about this lunch menu we heard about.”

Well, there wasn’t much to it–which is why I was actually able to pull it off! Here’s how you can create your own if you’re interested.

1. Make a blank template that the kids can fill out.

Yes, you could also do this on the computer, but I believe in just doing things now, so this is how mine ended up.

Then I used our printer to make enough copies for the entire week–one per day for each child.

2. Write down the lunch choices on a menu and post it somewhere for easy viewing.

I divided mine into categories. As the week passed and we ran out of items, I crossed them out. On other days I added new items on a post-it and stuck it on top of the menu.

3. Help kiddos when necessary.

Food is awfully motivating for a child, right? So “no lunch order, no lunch” created quite the motivation to get this project done daily. My two fluent readers and writers completed their order forms independently.

I worked with Elijah (my youngest) to complete his–we alternated with him tracing and writing and then reading out the letters to me.

4. Create an order form collection slot.

Kids placed orders in the assigned slot, then in the evenings after dinner one child would collect them and be my lunch box assembly line worker.

We did this for our camp week, but you could also do it for everyday lunch options, too!

Any other real-life ideas you use to encourage writing in the summer?

Ages of my children: 12, 10, and 8

Educational Philosophies I pull from: Leadership Education, Literature-Based, Charlotte Mason, Unschooling

When Jamie first proposed this series I thought, “That will be easy to write. We don’t use much.”

Then I saw all the questions from the introductory post and realized I might actually have something useful to say.

A few of your comments jumped out at me:

• The repeated request to know what has worked and what hasn’t, and why.
• How to “make your own” curriculum.
• How to use readily available resources (like the library) and literature as materials for learning.

I can answer these because of our own eclectic and interest-led elementary homeschooling experience.

Defining Curriculum

My Random House College Dictionary defines curriculum as:

1. the aggregate of courses of study given in a school, college, etc.
2. the regular or a particular course of study in a school, college, etc.

The simple definition of curriculum is a course of study.

Homeschoolers often refer to curriculum as learning materials that are packaged, prepared and prescribed in a certain order to teach a particular subject or subjects.

There is a difference.

I don’t mean to get hung up on semantics, but I want to make sure when I talk about curriculum we’re using the same definition. For the purpose of this post and to keep things clear, when I refer to curriculum I mean packaged, prepared and ready-to-use materials.

Photo by Renee Tougas

Elementary Education

I believe the focus of the elementary years is to foster, grow and develop a child’s innate appetite for learning and life.

This is the love of learning phase.

As such, we don’t use a lot of pre-determined (learn certain things at certain times) curriculum because we want our children to explore their world from an internally motivated perspective. We want them to learn about things that fascinate, intrigue, puzzle, and interest them.

To this end we use a lot of literature. Both to explore our interests and to expose ourselves to new ideas. Most of these books we access for free from the library.

However, there are some academic skills we teach our children to help them as they explore and make sense of their world.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic are the academic basics that we purposefully and actively teach our children during their elementary years. To do this, I use curriculum.

I use this curriculum very loosely and on our own timeline, but it helps me provide structure and skill building practice.

Reading

Reading is foundational. It’s one of the most important pieces of building an education.

You learn to read. And then you read to learn.

It’s easy as homeschool parents to get panicky about our children learning to read. I’ve written a detailed post about our family’s experience. And let me tell you it hasn’t been an easy process – talk about what has worked and what hasn’t!

Here’s a quick summary:

• With all three of our children we used Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This curriculum worked the best with our oldest who was reading independently by the time she was six.
• With our other two it’s been a lot of trial and error and in the end I just let it go until they were really ready to try again.
• My ten-year-old just finished his first chapter book all on his own initiative. Reading has not come easy for him but he’s internally motivated to keep doing it. And that’s the real goal – to foster a child’s natural desire to learn.

Photo by Renee Tougas

Writing

There are two parts to writing – mechanics and composition. We’ve used two curricula to teach writing mechanics.

We use Getty Dubay to teach our children handwriting. We choose this program mostly for how easy it is to transition to cursive and for its aesthetic appeal.

When she was eleven our oldest daughter “graduated” to a typing program after learning cursive handwriting. For that we used Ten Thumbs.

We teach spelling, grammar, and vocabulary in the context of everyday life composition writing. This includes letters to penpals and grandparents, e-mail, secret codes (these are the kids’ absolute favorite), book reports, science reports, poetry, story writing and more.

In the past I tried both Spelling Wisdom and Natural Speller. Many people really like these programs and I liked them quite a lot also. My daughter was less enthusiastic though, so we’ve taken a life-learning approach for spelling.

Math

Our family likes Math-U-See and it’s the only math curriculum we’ve tried.

One of my children struggles with math more than my other two and I am considering a different curriculum for him, perhaps I’ll try Teaching Textbooks.

Photo by Renee Tougas

You can find an extensive post on FIMBY about how we teach math.

What about the rest?

This is a list of the subjects we study through reading (together and individually), discussions, travel, outdoor adventures, relationships, play, experiments, community involvement and otherwise everyday living:

• World Study – history, geography, and cultures
• Science & Nature Study
• Art, Dance and Music Appreciation
• Handicrafts & Home Skills
• Physical & Outdoors Education
• Bible & Character Formation

You can visit Homeschool Help at FIMBY for more posts on building an interest-led elementary homeschool course of study.

What resources or curriculum do you use for elementary education?

Handwriting curriculum is one of the first purchases new homeschooling parents make, eager to get their child started off on the journey of communicating through the written word.

Learning to write their own name feels exciting and important to young children, so as parents it can seem like a big responsibility to choose the best resource.

Well worry no more! This post contains six of the most helpful, popular handwriting choices currently on the market.

1. A Reason for Handwriting

This curriculum uses as its foundation verses from the Bible. Each week a different verse is memorized and used as copywork practice.

Lessons are designed to be completed in 10-15 minutes, and the program covers both manuscript and cursive writing. Levels go from Kindergarten up to Grade Six if necessary.

2. Handwriting Without Tears

Handwriting Without Tears was developed by an occupational therapist. It therefore follows a developmental sequence, initially introducing the letters that are easiest to write and proceeding in difficulty from there.

This curriculum uses a two-lined approach for handwriting, as opposed to the more traditional three lines. Some customers report this as an advantage, while others find it confusing for children.

3. Getty-Dubay Italic Program

The Getty-Dubay method uses italic writing from the beginning of a child’s lessons. The main advantage comes when transitioning to cursive, which is said to be significantly easier when using this method as many of the letters are formed the same way.

Getty-Dubay begins with a Kindergarten level and continues through Grade Six.

4. Copywork

In the Charlotte Mason style of education, copywork is used for handwriting practice. Students are initially taught their basic letter shapes, and then practice by copying inspiring quotations, poems, or Biblical passages.

Head to Simply Charlotte Mason for several print-ready, free copywork pages to use with your children.

5. Draw Write Now

This series of books was created to combine drawing instruction and an interest in handwriting. Each book contains a series of simple drawing lessons, followed by a writing passage about the object being drawn.

The authors of Draw Write Now also created StartWrite Handwriting Software, which allows you to create, customize, and print handwriting pages for your child, based on his interests and practice needs.

6. Your Child’s Imagination

Bear in mind that you don’t have to use a formal handwriting curriculum.

In our home we have a shelf with inexpensive handwriting workbooks, paper, pencils, and lined white boards. Our children are not required to do writing lessons, but regularly choose to spend time working on letter formation and asking for help while creating stories or writing captions on their artwork.

Children naturally want to communicate through written words, especially as they see parents model the importance of writing. Choose the best resource that fits your children’s learning style and watch them take off with their newfound skill.

Please share the experiences you’ve had with these and other handwriting curriculums.