Creative Writing with James

James working diligently on his new creative writing lesson at Ashleigh's workplace.  We are going to work diligently on creative writing this year.  Each boy, well Ash too, has a book inside of them.  John has had his story written in his mind for about 3 years, Nick changes his as he goes, and James' mind never quits.

Today I noticed something different in the way James' approaches this sort of task compared to John, (Nick is still to be seen, well tomorrow I may know, LOL).  James' doesn't want my help, he wants the tools to do it himself.  After spending about 1.5hours working diligently, we discussed the three creative writing tasks he needs to complete before we meet again at a coffee shop to work on his book.  1.  He must write 16-24 sentences to further this story.  Then when we meet again, we will discuss the aspects of his story and make corrections as needed.  2. He must be the first to begin the Writing Round Robin for this week, 16-24sentences. 3.  He must write an entry for his personal blog.  Any length, any topic.

A small change we made in our school curriculum took place today.  I love, and we have used for almost our entire home school experience, the Alpa Omega Publications system.  In May we started John on the Monarch Online version of the Alpha Omega SOS curriculum.  Today, James and Nick and I pulled out our old disks to get their new school year begun.  We found that we could not utilize any of them: too old, scratched, or simply missing.  I did an online search for a simple to use online (free) curriculum to tide us over till next month and October to purchase the Monarch system.  What I found is from a group that I have used in the past for Art and loved.  The only thing it lacks that I will have to supplement with is Bible.  The cost wasn't free, but it is only $35/mo for the both of them, I can end it at any point, the boys can move up as needed without extra cost, and the art program becomes available to us in about 30days.  I think we will use it through the 8th grade (that is the highest they offer), then we will move the boys to the monarch system.

Ashleigh began her sophomore year at UTEP today.  She liked it, though she has a summer virus (cold) and felt groggy all day.  Not to mention she hadn't taken into consideration food.  Wednesday she will bring lunch, LOL!!

BTW Ashleigh finished her book.  It is a book she started at age 10.  She finished it with 160k words.  Now she is editing the manuscript (ms).