Wordsmith Craftsman, Adaptable writing curriculum for high school

If you ever meet a homeschool mom who claims they are not a curriculum junkie, immediately check to see if they’ve been replaced by a pod person. I love homeschool curriculum, and my favorites are homeschool history curriculum and homeschool writing curriculum. I found another homeschool writing curriculum that I love, and can’t wait to tell you about. It’s yet more to add to my homeschool curriculum stash.

[This post is sponsored by Common Sense Press, all opinions are my own]

What is Wordsmith Craftsman?

Quite simply this is a homeschool writing curriculum that can be used either for your entire homeschool high school career, or in a shorter and more condensed time period.

What? Ticia that’s crazy, how in the world can you use one book for four years?

Quite simple, this curriculum is divided into a couple of different units that can be expanded to cover a full year of homeschool curriculum.

I’m going to use it to get an ebook version of Wordsmith Craftsman, and I’m going to check out their editing materials.

The four year plan is perfect for the student intending to go into a trade, or another alternative besides college.

If you are starting this with a high schooler intending to go to college, I would use this on a two-year plan. You could use it for the entire four years, and repeat the last unit to keep working at improving their essay skills. As you can see the Common Sense Press has it all thought out. Realistically speaking, that four-year plan could be for a college-bound high schooler. You’ll notice they are reviewing part three for two years with plenty of research papers, so it’s still not a blow-off class.

What I like about Wordsmith Craftsman

I stuffed Wordsmith Craftsman in my backpack then headed to my local Barnes and Noble, grabbed a giant tea and started planning out the material. I read the note to the teacher, and then the note to the students I thought, “Man I wish I’d found this a few years ago. It would have saved me a couple of curriculum I bought that cover the same material.”

I looked at the first unit and noticed it covered many of the ideas taught in the college class my boys just took: learning to take notes, planning how to schedule your time, setting priorities.

Great material to learn at the beginning of your high school career. Great material to review from time to time, especially as each class I’ve seen teach this covers it differently.

I loved how they talked about planning and taking notes. I took a few notes myself, and thought, “Ha! I’m vindicated child who complained at what I told you.”

I am mature like that.

Now, I got this at the end of the school year, so we didn’t dig into this too much. I’m trying to decide just how I’ll use this next year. I like giving my kids another view on how to write (each kid learns differently, so why not give them that chance?).

Also, I’ve discovered my kids have a bad habit of writing to everyone as if they’re writing to their friends, so a review of how to write a formal letter is in order. I plan for us to complete unit 1 in the first month or two .

I’m looking forward to unit two

Unit Two gets into the nitty gritty, and asks your kids to make sure they truly understand the boring parts of grammar without literally writing out the rules.

Yes, my high school English teacher had us literally write out the rules of grammar. I’m unsure if I think that really did much to help.

Oh, I just checked on the actual site for Wordsmith Craftsman, and they have an ebook version! SCORE!

I just might pick up a digital copy because it’s easier to use with our monthly notebooks.

I think I’ll take a bit more time with that, and work on that for the rest of the first semester.

Then we’ll dive into the research papers with Unit Three

Unit three is what you really need to focus on if your child is going to college, where I hear they still write papers. I’ve been hearing a few local public school parents complain about the lack of paper writing.

The skills learned in unit one will be key here as they have to properly plan how to use their time to write a good research paper.

I spent quite a few nights in college writing a paper the night before it was due. All right, if I’m honest it was every time there was a paper due.

I’ve heard other people actually write their papers before the paper is due, that would not be me. I know, I know, it’s a horrible example. I give you, procrastination monkey:

This is me more than I want to admit. It is also more than one of my children, not my daughter, she’s way too organized, and I truly don’t know where she got it.

This is why a writing curriculum like this is important, it reinforces skills they’ve learned before.

More writing ideas

• Forbidden Island as writing prompts
• How to describe characters
• Write your plague journal