This next Review couldn't have come at a better time then right now. We were given Excellence in Literature Handbook for Writers from Everyday Education, LLC. Mahala is nearing the end of High School and she would honestly rather eat dirt then to write a paper. And you know what....I totally understand her. When I was her age I just wrote my feelings out on paper, argued and compared ideas with my written words when asked to. Writing was EASY for me, the problem was all that technical stuff like comas, grammar and all the other not so fun stuff in writing that I would probably eat a spoonful of dirt to not have to teach it. Needless to say we haven't done a lot of formal teaching as far as writing goes and I was a little scared to even take on this Review. Funny thing is that even though I was nervous to actually use this Handbook I couldn't wait to dive right in. Mahala and I both laughed out-loud when we read that the first section was Introduction to Arguments and Essays.....were they looking into my house? Because we've had a lot of "arguments" about Essays around here. Ok, maybe not a lot but there is definitely some miscommunication going on when it comes to writing an Essay around here. This Handbook came to us as a PDF, which was perfect because we were on our RV trip. We weren't planning any essays or papers while on the trip, but I did have Mahala and Kaden keep a daily journal. While Dad was driving Mahala and I would get out the laptop and read a little a few times a week and I would have her take notes while we read. This Handbook is HUGE, I'm talking over 400 pages! As soon as I scanned the enormous table of contents I knew this was going to be our Best Friend. Mahala wants to go to College, this means she needs to be able to write different types of papers. And guess who she's going to ask for help.....Me....so, I better learn some of this too! :) I'll be honest Mahala took one look at this and instantly felt overwhelmed. But, when I explained to her that this was a resource not a begin at the beginning and read straight though kind of text book she was relieved.
We quickly noticed certain topics that we knew we needed help on...here are a few of our Favorites and most helpful so far.
*The Visual Guide to Organizing Your Papers
*The Rubric for Writing Evaluations
*Paragraph Structure and Function
*Honestly All of Part 2 in this Book, which cover Usage and Style. It covers everything from early grammar information that Mahala needs to brush up on to frequently misspelled words and "wishy-washy words".
*Basic Punctuation that my eyes have been opened to the many things I need to tweak.
*And last but not least we are going through the References and Bibliographies section right now. Amazing!!! I have forgotten so much since I was in School and I realize now that Skylar wasn't as prepared as he could have been when he started College. He's in his 3rd year of College now....hopefully thanks to this Handbook, Mahala will be more prepared and confident with whatever kind of paper is thrown her way.
So, what did I think? Well, Mahala and I both learned so much and have only scratched the surface of what this resource has in-store for us. I would HIGHLY recommend you run right this minute and order one of these for your Family....even if you are not a Homeschool Family. If your Kids are going to College or just in High school...this Handbook is worth it's weight in Gold. I plan to get it printed so that we can make side notes and highlight in it....we roll like that. We need to be able to held it in our laps to really soak it all in, so I look forward to doing that hopefully this next week.
Make sure you go see what Everyday Education, LLC has going on with Social Media!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment