Tomorrow Is A New Day. And A New Writing Program.

Just before our Thanksgiving break, EG finished Writing Tales 2. She's zoomed through both it and Writing Tales 1 since the beginning of this calendar year. Therefore, it's time to plod ever onward.

Into Classical Writing: Homer.

In an attempt to be prepared, I had bought all of the materials over the summer. I spent several days reading through the materials and felt that I had a good grasp on the program. I then put the materials away, and went about the rest of our homeschooling year.

The last two weeks have been... hectic, to say the least. As I referenced in a previous post, I've been feeling mentally down this past week, and between Wednesday night and Friday afternoon, several more things were added to the weight on my mind. Somewhere in between the summer and now, combined with the possibility of moving and every day life, I forgot that there was a need to, well, prepare for Homer. That there was something called a "Preparation Week."

Oops?

Luckily, it doesn't look like it's really an entire week of work, so we should be okay to move cautiously forward. I like how thorough the program is and honestly, I'm eager for EG to get started.

That said, I've been thinking over the past several months about the possible value of two writing programs. Many people use multiple approaches to math; since math and writing are, in my opinion, the two most important areas, why not two writing programs? Yes, it could lead to a high volume of required output, especially as a student grows older, but...

So?

Homeschoolers talk the talk about wanting to produce excellent writers, but there's also a lot of talk about not requiring too much too soon. No, it's not a good plan to turn a six year old from writing with ridiculous expectations. EG's not a six year old, though.

In practice, she was pursuing two different writing programs this autumn, since one of her co-op classes was creative writing. The two different aspects of writing were different enough in focus that she didn't seem to have a problem with doing "writing" twice. Actually, some weeks, she was doing it more like thrice, as we attempted to use IEW's Geography-Based Lessons.

I don't know what I might have her use in partnership with Classical Writing, or if I will continue to let a more creative writing be the secondary focus, but it's a thought that keeps persisting.