This week we finished up our science unit and learned how to write a 5 paragraph essay. I had Steven research the contributions Canadians have made to the study and exploration of space. Then he filled out the writing map I found here and used it to write an essay. Some of the essay writing concepts didn’t quite sink in, so we’ll be writing more essays later in the year. But we didn’t spend too much time on it this time around because we were both excited to start our NaNoWriMo prep!
NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. The original challenge is to write a 50000 word novel in a month, but they have a young novel writers program that gives all sorts of support to kids who want to participate and lets you set your own word goal. There are resources for teachers who want to do it with their class too.
It’s still a week away, but we started doing the prep provided in the young writers program workbook. You can find the workbooks here, free to download, for different age groups. I ended up purchasing one because I wanted it printed anyways and it didn’t cost much more to buy the book (and I’d rather any profits go to NaNoWriMo instead of Staples). Steven and I are both working through the exercises in notebooks and sharing the workbook. He’s a little ahead of me because I work, but I’ll catch up this weekend.
Steven already has an amazing idea for his novel and is working on character questionnaires. I don’t want to say too much about it right now though in case he changes his mind. I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I am working through “Sparking an Idea” in the workbook and will hopefully have an idea this weekend.
We are both going to be writing to Steven’s word goal, and whatever I write will be meant for his age group… or at least I’ll try to write for his age group. I’m not sure how easy that will be for me. But the idea is that we will write in November and then in January we will edit them, part of which will include reading each others novels and providing feedback. So I want to write something that Steven will hopefully enjoy reading.
If we’re happy with what we’ve written, we might even make them available on Kindle! Steven really likes that idea.
I think that’s all I really have to say this week. I feel like the blog might be a little quiet over the next month while we write. Stay safe out there! The covid numbers have really gone up here recently. Probably due to Thanksgiving.
