"Writing" Projects

Right before we started school in July, Brave Writer came out with their latest book, Partnership Writing.  It was on sale initially, so I purchased a copy.  It goes through some of the Writer's Jungle basics, but then it also has a monthly project list.  Some I liked; some I don't.  Still, I figured I'd give some of them a shot.  We started by spending a few weeks working on codes and ciphers.  I snapped a couple of shots of the kids writing/painting messages with lemon juice 'invisible ink.'

M1, who is now Doodlebug for this blog's intents and purposes (I dunno... I'm just tired of referring to him by something that doesn't even remotely resemble a name, even if it does contain an initial, and I do call him Doodlebug at home on a regular basis), really enjoyed the code project.  This is my child who is more naturally drawn to codes and ciphers and spy equipment at the store.  M2, who is now Boo (because we started by calling her Beangirl, then Tinkerbean, then Tinkerboo, and now just Boo), enjoyed parts of it.

This week, however, instead of doing the next project on the list, I decided we'd do the homophone mini-book.  We started making a homophone list on Monday and worked on it until Thursday.  It's nowhere near comprehensive (at dinner tonight we realized steak/stake wasn't on the board... guess what our main dish was?), but we got about 60 sets of homophones.

That's a lot of homophones

I came up with some of them, but the kids came up with the majority.  They really enjoyed the challenge!  Then we created little books - three pieces of paper cut in half, then put together, folded in half, and stapled in the middle created nice little booklets.

Doodlebug let me photograph his.

Yes, son, toe jam IS stinky.

His sense of humor really shines through, and I love that he took the time to really work on his illustrations.  I gave them the choice of writing a sentence with the word or drawing an image, and his book is a good mixture of both.  Boo went more for sentences, but then, she likes to write (she also wrote only one word per page... I'm not sure why Doodlebug did two per page.  It certainly went beyond the initial scope of the project).  She likes to draw, too, but only on her terms.

In the next day or so, I'll post our history lesson for this week.  There won't be one for next week; we take Labor Day week as a break from school - our first break this year!  The kids are excited, and so am I.  It's time for some relaxation - as if that'll really happen.  But it'll be nice to change up the schedule for a bit and relax.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!