LOST TOOLS OF WRITING

I heard Mr. Kern speak and it was fantastic! He is an awesome presenter and, from what I saw of him, an excellent teacher. He really understands children and he understands writing. His program is not only classical in nature, what most of us want for our children, but it is easy to understand, easy to implement, and easy to apply across the curriculum.

His program focuses on invention, something most programs don’t teach. The Lost Tools of Writing actually teaches students how to write from their own ideas. Shucks (this is the country in me coming out), it actually teaches students how to think. If I had to compare it to another program on the market, it is the writing version of Teaching the Classics. Teaching students to study history in the context of ideas.

Further below you will see a middle school writing sequence that I recommended for our co-op. But in addition to that I have my children doing writing assignments at home. We will continue to use my preference at home in addition to my other preference at coop. (I believe in using two multiple resources for school, whenever possible. I may post about this later.)

For my own children at home, we’re doing the following sequence for history, in addition to the co-op work. Some of this is redundant. And this works because we don’t do history at co-op. I like our rotation and don’t want to change it.

Elementary level (1-4)
Write from History (1st through 4th)
Writing Tales (my 4th grader will be doing this at co-op, so he will be getting both programs)

Middle school or Logic stage (5-8)
Write from History(5th and 6th only, my daughter is occasionally rewriting the narratives into 3 paragraph papers–we’re continuing to do copywork and dictation and studying grammar)
Lost Tools of Writing (7th and 8th, for use with history rather than literature which she will cover at co-op)
Institute for Excellence in Writing will be used by co-op for Language Arts at Co-op

High School (not sure)
For High School I’m not sure because we will have to look at College requirements and state requirements for graduation.