Paragraph breaks?

[Kathie in Va]

My son is 12 yo and in 7th grade. His version of Frogs Desiring a King is only one paragraph. I've been told that his writings should be longer at his age, however they didn't see the writing assignment. Now that I think about it, I realize he could break it up into paragraphs but we haven't discussed where one would do this. Should I go into this with him or should I let him keep fables short like this?

(Oh he tried to have a bit of fun with this one also. The strange comments about a turkey are from a new family inside joke... coming from a funny part of our Advent book that all the kids where rolling on the floor laughing about.)


People Desiring a King
Adapted from Joseph Jacobs'
Frogs Desiring a King
Once the people where living peacefully in an open plane. Nothing bothering them and they were not troubling anybody else. But some thought that this was wrong and they said to themselves, “We have no law, we have no order, we have no turkey,” they thought they needed a king and turkey. So they asked god, “We want a King and turkey, NOW!” Jove laughed at this and threw down a big rock that killed all the dinosaurs. The big rock scared the people to their hiding places, and they did not come out until a turkey egg hatched. Then they became bolder and decided to start worshiping the rock and thus paganism was formed. But some where still wanting a king that ruled and gave orders to improve the area. They told Jove, “We want a real king that rules over us and more turkey!” Now this made Jove angry so he sent down a giant turkey which ate them all up. As they were being eaten they cried out, “Please forgive us, for now we know that turkeys make bad rulers.”

TIA!!

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

The turkey was a cute touch!!!

As for the paragraph question, he obviously has too easy of a time with these stories. No, this story shouldn't be longer, rather, he needs to move ahead in Homer to the point where he gets to the longer stories. He is in 7th grade, you say? He should be whizzing through Homer and onto Diogenes soon. Not in a break necked pace, but get him to assignments which are longer. There are many... look at the writing projects, get him to the summary sentence outlines, and there you have your paragraphing. We teach longer narratives in terms of acts and scenes, and he will learn the components of the scenes and figure out where to put his paragraph breaks then.

Does this answer it for you?

Lene

[Kathie in VA]

Lene,

Thank you for replying so quickly! Yea, I thought the turkey was funny also. Sometimes he goes a bit off moral but I think he stuck to it this time.

I've been wondering if these are too easy for my kids. We are doing Older Beginners (w/ the workbooks) with my ds and his sister who is 14 and in 8th grade. The current paper that they should have done last week was Xenaphon. I think this is the first where they are supposed to focus on imitating the authors emphasis (although my dd really didn't like this one and we might just skip the WP and move on). I've been tempted to move them faster but I'm always afraid of missing something. Can we skip ahead in OB? I guess this is one of the down sides to using the workbooks.. if we skip ahead to a different writing project then we will miss the A&I portions. These are great btw, my kids are really getting the grammar portion.

Thank you for your help.
--Kathie

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Well,

I would do this...

1. Skip the WP and double or triple up on the grammar lessons until you get to a challenging writing project (you read ahead and figure out when that is. I am guessing somewhere between the summary sentences and writing backwards.)

2. Once there, finish OB with both WPs and A&I, skipping anything that is unnecessary repetition.

In short... only do the exercises they need to do.

Lene

[Kathie in Va]

Lene,

Thank you for this guidance, I really appreciate it. My kids will be thrilled to make faster progress, I'm sure....(and so will I ;D).

Blessings,
Kathie

[Kathie in VA]

One more question on this:
Is there a list showing which weeks/days are review vs new material? I was going to make one but would rather not if it is already done. ;D

Thanks!

[greengables]

Kathie, there is no separate list telling you which lessons are review, and which are new, but if you look at the weekly schedules, anything that has 'routine' in the parentheses following a lesson is likely to be review.

Kathy

[Kathie in VA]

Thanks Kathy,

I'll go through the book and check. We are currently in week 7 and it seems all the lessons are new. However I'm thinking of skipping the writing projects till we get to WP5 as Lene suggested. I just went through the 'lesson' for wk7's WP (which is #3) with them and I think they have already done this so we may skip it. (Both kids have re-written their papers and changed the characters, location, time, etc and still maintained the core of the story... although we never stopped to determine the essentials and accidentials.)

.... but perhaps I'll still make them do the outline since they haven't been doing any outlines (they haven't needed them). Or should I wait till the next writing project before working on outlines (or even wait till they 'need' to write an outline?)

Thanks again for all your help. I really love this program and I think it flows fine. I'm just having problems knowing how/when to skip my kids thru parts that they may not need.... but I'm getting there! ;D

--Kathie