One Year Adventure Novel Review
This being Homeschool Month here at the Point….I will be sharing our favorite curriculum choices. This one, One Year Adventure Novel, HAD to be my first recommendation. I didn’t even have to think about it. Nope. It’s our #1.
We started using it 5 years ago and all of my high school kids have gone through it. My oldest daughter was already finished with school when we got it, so she volunteered to oversee the lessons (but really she just wanted to take the class). Since she was taking care of it for me, I thought I would use that time to work with the younger kids, but we all found ourselves watching every video lesson and practicing our own writing right alongside the “official” students in the class.
One Year Adventure Novel is a DVD-based high school fiction writing curriculum through which the kids write an entire novel by the end of the year. How cool is that?! It’s entertaining, stretching, educational, adventurous and exciting. No really. My kids love it so much that I make it the last class of the day. It’s their reward for doing the rest of their school.
We enjoyed it so much the first year that we followed with Other Worlds (their science fiction & fantasy expansion) and now we are using Cover Story with my junior high and early high school kids (they write a magazine instead of a novel!).
I know what you’re thinking, “Lisa, you can’t do everything they do. If One Year Adventure Novel jumped off a cliff would you do it too?” Yep. I probably would.
But back to the subject. More things I love about this high school writing curriculum.
1. My kids have learned so much about creative writing. My older kids have written novels and even though they aren’t all publishable, they have that accomplishment which built their confidence.
2. It stirs up their sense of adventure, creativity and pushes them to think outside of their box.
3. You are getting so much more than just a writing program….with your box comes a code that you can use to join the forums, a student novel writing contest and lots of extras!
4. Friendships. My kids have made many friends through the forums and the Summer Workshop.
5. Oh yeah! The Summer Workshop. This will be our third year to attend and it.is.amazing. To prove it to you, my kids save all year to pay their own way completely. They gain so much knowledge, fellowship and enthusiasm for writing there. It really is worth the sacrifice. (AND you can still get the early bird prices through the end of March!)
And the folks at OYAN are constantly working to improve and add to their products, so they have made a new and improved 2nd edition! It has more depth covering the book, “The Prisoner of Zenda,” expanded information in the DVDs and better quality (although I have no complaints about the first one).
(OK I have to add, Runt the Brave
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