A Reason For Base Skill Builders
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this review or post, but all opinions are our own.
Does sloppy handwriting and careless spelling make you cringy? Me too! As a middle school mom, I’m here with tips on getting the right tools to rebuild base skills like handwriting and spelling with daily drills. A Reason For Handwriting and A Reason For Spelling make it easy for all of us to build base skills back in no time.
At the end of the school year, we like to walk through some evaluation steps. You can’t assess what you haven’t measured. I will share my homeschool evaluation tips next week, but I want to discuss where to find a great base skill builder for handwriting and spelling if you are like me and have some room for improvement.
What are Base Skills?
Two base skills in homeschool life are handwriting and spelling. You use these skills every day. Base skills need to be worked on constantly in the formative schooling years. Even a little time away from these habits can reveal a decline in previous skills.
Whether in your year-end evaluations or any time in your school year, you might discover that your older child needs to remediate their handwriting skills.
Is your child turning in text-styled homework answers? As homeschooling parents, we can let things slide for a season. Spelling and Handwriting are common daily practices that can fall off the radar as your child nears middle school age.
I’ve done it too. After all, my kids are in middle school; do they need to practice handwriting?
You know if they do!
When you know, you want a tool that will help AND one the kids will want to use each day.
This year, handwriting declined as we moved to more reading material and fewer workbooks. You might see the same thing if you move to more computer-based programs. I need a reliable way to help my older kids get handwriting practice to keep their skills sharp. I knew we needed to add base skill builders for handwriting that didn’t feel like busy work or have too much drill.
When things are off course, I recommend asking, “When was the last time this was going well?”
- What was your routine like?
- What tools were you using?
- Are there any major differences going on now?
- What do we need to focus on the most?
- How we get back to EXCELLING as quickly as possible?
As I asked those questions, I had to think back to our first round of homeschoolers. I was a much stricter homeschool mom. It was my first turn at homeschooling, and I was definitely less distracted. Now, I am working, sharing homeschooling duties with my husband and we have older kids. No matter what has changed about our homeschool, my care about how my kids learn has not changed. I want them to build their base skills and grow each and every year.
In our evaluation, I decided we needed to focus on handwriting and spelling the most. I thought about what worked best for us in the past. When we first started homeschooling, I did a ton of research on handwriting. There were several programs to choose from, but after looking at the options, I chose A Reason For Handwriting for the kids.
As a new homeschooling parent, I liked that a teaching guide was available. After all, I had never taught handwriting before, and since Handwriting is a base skill, I wanted to do it right.
A Reason For Handwriting has a Unique Setup.
The books begin with instructions according to the level. Letters are introduced, and their construction is modeled on a pre-lined paper for the student. After the instruction portion, the lessons repeat for four days of practice, leading to a final draft page. The final draft page is surrounded by outlined black-and-white artwork your child can color in.
This final day’s page can be colored and displayed, but we love to send it to distant family members. The teaching guide has a ton more suggestions. We sent it to our legislators before Capitol Day, to pastors, and to friends who loved receiving it in the mail.
The feedback the kids got from their letters of encouragement helped them to care about the work they were doing. It truly gave them A Reason For Writing.
If a tool IS working in your homeschool, don’t change it.
Since A Reason for Handwriting was a great choice to help us get back on track for handwriting, I jumped at the opportunity to use A Reason For Spelling to help my middle schoolers get some spelling practice before summer. Spelling words are challenging, but they are repeated each day of the week to gain mastery. The giving of the tests is quick, and we check them right away, so there is NO correcting for me to do later. I like that a lot!
What I like about using a program from the same publisher…
- Using a familiar format means less time getting set up and learning another program.
- A Reasons daily drills help build core skills quicker
- Teaching Guides are a great resource for me of me older students to stay on track
- Workbooks for the win in taming the paper beast!
- Biblical foundation in both books
- Parallell lesson formatting for maximized retention
- The kids create a chain of actions: do one – do the other
Base Skill Builder: A Reason For & a Discount
Every year, we need to sharpen some base skills. If you need help getting back on track with Handwriting or Spelling, you can use my code Amber20 for 20% off of your order when you click here.
Are you ready to wrap up your school year? Here are some more tips to help your homeschooler get organized, too.
