America’s Future Blog

Research in Increments - A Step by Step Guide to Writing Research Papers From a Christian Perspective

 This is a great curriculum outline for use as a student workbook or instructor reference.  It has all of the elements necessary to compile your research and see it through to a completed paper.  Step-by-step, you will find yourself writing the most organized and complete research paper of your life! 

I highly recommend this book not only for homeschooling families, but parents who would like to help their high school children learn to organize their required research papers.  As a public school student (many moons ago!), I would have been ecstatic to find this manual, as the instructions given to me at the time were limited at best.  What I learned through trial and error is clearly spelled out in this manual - you just have to follow the steps!

The manual is laid out into the following chapters, each reflecting as aspect of in-depth research and how to organize the writing once the research is complete:

• Choosing a topic
• Presentation of research
• Determining your audience
• Using index cards to organize
• Creating the bibliography
• How to ’skim’ through books and magazines
• Sources of information
• Conducting interviews
• Pictures in research as visuals
• Should you add scripture?
• Creating the outline
• Finding the ’hook’ to keep people’s interest
• Introductions
• Summary
• End notes
• Writing the paper
• Finishing touches 

Comprehensive Composition by Design A Study

Starting with preschool aged children, we should be encouraging creativity in writing stories, poems, letters, invitations, etc.  Divided by age groups, this book shows the kinds of compositions each grade level should be attempting, along with tips on how to help your students improve their writing skills.

The topics covered are:

• How to organize the composition to tackle the project step-by-step
• Construction of paragraphs, topic sentences and concluding sentences
• The Essay
• Choosing topics
• Taking notes
• Writing outlines
• Using references to improve writing, like the dictionary and thesaurus
• Improving sentences
• Emphasizing organization
• Proper grammar and punctuation

Types of writing covered:

• Descriptive
• Persuasive
• Narrative
• Business Letters
• Short Story
• Expository
• Biography
• Friendly Letters
• News Story
• Research
• Reports

Included are instructions for the educator on evaluating essays, sample lessons, checklists for project completion, and skill attainment.  In all a very comprehensive manual on developing and writing all types of compositions. 

Homeschool families will find this a valuable reference.  I would recommend it to instructors that have a good background in language arts, as it provides an excellent source of information to ‘refresh’ your skills. 

Type It - The Linguistically Oriented Typing Manual 

Tried and true from 1974, Type it utilizes the basics and teaches touch typing - originally with typewriters.  Useful in teaching students of varying skill levels at the same time, it is also economical for homeschool families with multiple students of different ages, because you only need to purchase the manual once.

Organized phonetically to reinforce reading and spelling patterns, this can be a tools for challenged readers as well as a useful tool to improve your students keyboarding skills.  The lessons start with home row keys and quickly progress to short words.  The progress chart will help keep track of your students progression as well as provide documentation for records.

Sometimes the old ways are best, and I think this curriculum still fits the bill.  It’s simple and easy to understand, and after a few lessons, the student can work independently.  If you need a keyboarding course for your middle or high school student and prefer old-school solutions - this is the perfect book for you!

This award winning collection of colored music tubes are used by educators, musicians, therapy and play.  Whacky Music’s Boomwhackers are so popular they have sold over 5 million Boomwhacker tubes worldwide. 

 The tube colors are based on the CHROMA-NOTES Colored Music System.  The music note-heads are colored to match the tubes, which is very popular in elementary education.  CHROMA-NOTES has become so popular that programmers have developed a software that converts music into the colored note-heads to be used with Boomwhacker tubes.  Finale 2008 will be released with the option to use the CHROMA-NOTES system in their software, along with a variety of other functions for your budding composer.  Have a favorite family song?  No problem!  Punch in the music, and print out sheets the whole family can use. 

Whacky Music offers six different sets of books for educating your children with sheet music, musical games and activities including;  Boom-A-Tunes, Totally Tubular, Tube Time, Tubular series, Bible Boomers and the Building Blocks series.  Utilizing the curriculum available, even musically inexperienced parents can help their student learn rhythm, melody and harmony. 

There are many fun ways to use the Boomwhackersfor individuals, families and even groups.  Does your family like to play games together?  Using a couple of sets of tubes and one of the curriculum books you can spend an afternoon learning a new song, and play it together for the evening entertainment.  Your group or co-op could form a tube choir, similar to a hand bell choir.  The possibilities are endless!

We gave our toddler niece the Boomwhackers XTS Whack Pack for her third birthday, and then spent the whole afternoon playing with the tubes.  The teenagers where on the floor right along with the little ones, reading music and just spontaneously making original scores.  If we would have know how much the whole family was going to enjoy the Boomwhackers tubes, we would have added an extra set of mallets, as there were not enough to go around. We quickly learned that the mallets were not necessary, as you can bang the tubes together to create music too.  They were definitely a hit (please pardon the pun…)!

One of the most teacher-friendly writing curriculums on the market today!  Veteran homeschool teachers love this text as much as new educators, as it provides a flexible writing program.  Suitable for individual students, classrooms or co-op situtations, students will master middle and high school writing skills and gain confidence throught the course

Step-by-step instruction guides the student, while the teacher benefits from the flexible, detailed lesson plans that WriteShop offers.  No need for supplemental material - WriteShop has many resources for teaching, editing, evaluating, and grading writing.  Includes individualized checklists, evaluation forms, writing examples and tips for objective grading

Lessons include creative writing, expository writing, narrative writing (including first and third person), descriptive and informative paragraphs, and also include lesson important lessons in self-editing and individual style.  Every lesson builds on the last, to give them time to practice their new skills and apply them to the writing project.  Students will then edit and revise their own work several times, and by the end, they will have a polished composition. 

The teacher edition is a vital component of this program, and it should be considered absolutely neccessary to finish the coursework.  Nicest part of stipulation is - you can use it for WriteShop I and WriteShop II, there is no need to purchase a second teacher edition. 

Another great addition to the WriteShop program is Copying and Dictation Exercises for WriteShop I, consisting of sixteen selections that are gathered from quality literature including such sources as a Civil War era newspaper, a turn-of-the-century boys handbook, and a modern cookbook.   The book is non-consumable, so members of the same family can easily share one copy if they are not working out of it during the same lesson time.  If you have more than one student working with the booklet at a time, you will need to purchase additional copies.

The most economical way to purchase WriteShop is to buy the Basic Set, which includes the teacher edition and the WriteShop I student workbook.  That way, in future years, you will only need to purchase the WriteShop II student workbook for high school students. 

While I think WriteShop is one the best writing programs on the market, don’t take my word for it.  This curriculum is one of Cathy Duffy’s Top 100 Picks for Homeschool Curriculum!