Language Arts: 3 - 12
Igniting Your Writing
Author: Sandy Larsen
Publisher: Merritt Park Press
For more information or to order: www.homeschoolwriting.com

In my house we have a love-hate relationship with writing!  On one hand we know how important building good writing skills are for our kids' futures AND we know how proud they are when they finally complete an assignment; but on the other hand there's the long struggle to get it done.  Of course, you may have children for whom writing comes naturally, but who also have occasional writer's block or just need to liven-up their compositions.  Whatever situation you face in your home, Igniting Your Writing! can help to bring more joy and inspiration to the writing process.

While not a complete writing course, Igniting Your Writing! provides enough exercises to spread out over one or several years of instruction.  Each of the 24 lessons includes three skill levels: Start-Up, Intermediate, and Advanced.  This means you can reuse the lessons as your students progress academically over the years.  Instead of assigning grade levels, the author encourages you to choose one of the three levels based on your young writer's ability.  This also means that you can use this with several children at the same time - each working at their own ability level. 
Author Sandy Larsen begins the book with clear instructions to parents/teachers on how to use Igniting Your Writing, providing suggestions for scheduling and lesson order.  The lessons themselves are written to the student and are light-hearted, yet challenging for each skill level.  We found ourselves actually having fun as we read her entertaining examples and came up with our own fun words, sentences, titles, etc.  Lesson objectives and other teacher helps are provided for each lesson at the end of the book.  Topics covered in Igniting Your Writing! include: word order, run-on sentences, parts of speech, getting ideas, creating a character and setting, similes, inferences, descriptive writing, creating good titles, point of view, dialogue, editing/rewriting and more.  Igniting Your Writing! is spiral bound, so it lays flat for easier reading, and it's non-consumable, too.

I really like Sandy's emphasis on the writing process - the rough draft, rewriting, editing and final draft.  She often has students do their exercises on scratch paper (paper that is already used on the other side) so they can learn that editing and rewriting are important skills for ALL writers.  In addition to being a great supplement to your language arts program, the concepts taught in Igniting Your Writing! can be used and reinforced each time your child encounters an assignment in other subjects.  Most of the assignments are short, making it easy to add Igniting Your Writing! to your routine once a week, once a month, or however your schedule allows.  The entertaining lessons provide a nice break from more tedious language art studies. 

The ability to communicate effectively is a skill each of our children will need to possess as they move into adulthood.  Igniting Your Writing! is another useful tool to consider adding to your teaching resources - Sandy's passion for encouraging and inspiring young writers is evident throughout this helpful (and lively) course! 

Making the Grade: A
Cost:  $16.99
Value for Your Homeschool Dollar: 10
Review by Cindy Prechtel, Editor