(I'm not sure where to post this since it's not a question and not connected with a particular year plan.)

Thank you so much for Writing Aids and the writing program! My 7yo son had his first true writing assignment this week, in week 20 of the program. When we approached this assignment, he didn't even know what a paragraph was (he thought it was another word for page). But we walked through the student Writing Aids page and it made sense to him.

The best part was the sample paragraphs. Some of this might have been too abstract for him, but the samples really made a difference. When we read the paragraph about dogs and got to the part about the piano lessons, he laughed out loud. "That's not about dogs! They changed what they were talking about!" He got the point immediately.

The fish paragraph was also helpful. He first thought the paragraph had all the unity it needed, since everything was about fish. But when I started asking about the topic sentence and the conclusion, he could see that the fish paragraph was lacking something. I thought it was interesting the way you showed that this writer had skipped the organizing step.

We did the Cluster Diagram together, with me offering guidance and doing the writing. We came up with a lot of information there about Jamestown. When the time came to do the writing, I figured that he would want the paragraph to be as short as possible; but instead, he seemed to take pride in including as much information as he could, and even thought of additional information as he dictated to flesh out what he had started with. We ended up with a first paragraph that we're both quite proud of.

This is so different from what I've done with my older kids. With both of them, I've been figuring that it will be easier to teach writing later. I wish, now, that I'd instilled some of the basic habits in my older kids when they were young. I can see how my youngest will be able to learn this writing process, so gradually. I can also see how he will be in a better position to use writing to help him solidify his knowledge on other topics, since writing will require so much less effort for him than it requires of his older sisters.

I'm still plugging away with the older sisters, and we will get there - but I do wish that I had had the Tapestry program beside me when they were young. It would be nice not to have to have daily writing conferences with each child.