This online digital writing program from Here to Help Learning has been a huge part of my son's homeschooling since day one of receiving it. I don't know any other way to start this post except by saying that my son absolutely LOVES this writing curriculum. Let me tell you... before we had the opportunity to review this curriculum, we spent a lot of hours over many other writing curriculums to just end the day in tears and frustrated with each other. You too? I'm so glad I am not alone. Getting a boy to write, at least my boy, has proved to be one of the most difficult challenges for me when it comes to homeschooling.
Right from the very first video, my son was engaged and ready to follow the instructions. He is eleven and he very much took ownership of all of the printing and organizing of his notebook. The program is designed to help your child write paragraphs and then move them up into writing essays. Age wise my son is at the essay writing stage, but because we have had so many problems in the past with writing and writing programs, I started him at the Flight 1 Paragraph level. There are 3 Flights total to the curriculum. Flight 1-3 for paragraph writing is designed for kids grades 1-3, and Flights 1-3 for essay writing are geared toward grades 4-6. As you can see though, you can start your child wherever you see fit to start them. Starting him out at the Flight 1 Paragraph he will then move to Flight 2 Paragraph followed by Flight 3 Paragraph. After this, he moves to Flight 1 Essay working all the way through Flight 3 Essay. There are 32 lessons in each Flight. The suggested time to work on this curriculum is twice a week, but my son loved it so much he did it almost everyday and asked to do it on Saturday. I am NOT joking. It has a video that has your child put together a binder at the beginning of the course for them to keep their papers organized. The tabs in his notebook are titled - Notes, Writing Warm-Ups, Projects, Flying Solo, and Language Helps. It really is pretty much a hands-off course for parents. The instructions in the video will tell your child when to ask you for help and how you are to help them. You are to look at their writing and give them pointers as to what can be improved with it. At my son's age, I think he enjoys following someone else's instructions instead of listening to his mom. :)
My son recently had to participate in writing a speech for his 4H class and he said that this curriculum really helped him to put his thoughts together and write his speech. I really did not have to help him at all with the content of his speech. His father and I gave him some pointers, but overall he did the whole thing on his own.
Another thing that I love about the curriculum is the verse that they ask your child to memorize during the process of learning to write. It is from Colossians 3:17 and it says "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." It's such a great verse for my young man to memorize about work ethic and who we really are working for!
I thought the best way to review this product was to interview the person using it! This is my son, Evan, and here he is telling you a bit about the program and how it works:
You can probably guess already that I am going to highly recommend this curriculum for your child, especially if they have issues with wanting to write. Here to Help Learning offers a free one day trial if you want to check it out, and they offer a monthly subscription for $6.99. You receive all three levels with this online subscription and can use it with multiple children. You can also purchase the individual levels of the paragraph and essay writing that includes a workbook and the instructional DVDs if you would rather not use an online program. I hope this review helps you if you are looking for a writing curriculum and have struggled like I have to find one that fits your child.
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