A Peek into Our Homeschool: Creative Writing and Drama

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I hope that these peeks into our homeschool are an encouragement to you. Today I’d like to give examples of how we included creative writing and drama.

Long before Ray and I knew that our family would create history curriculum for homeschooling families, God was sowing seeds in each member of our family. Ray and I both began writing creatively as teenagers. Ray knew then that he wanted to write and publish books someday. In college he became a regular political columnist for the school newspaper. I simply knew that I liked to write poetry. When I was a high school senior, my English teacher gave my friend Lexie and me the freedom to do independent study. She allowed us to leave class, find quiet spots, and write creatively. I don’t remember the exact length of time but I think it lasted for an entire six-week grading period. Perhaps this experience helped me see that non-traditional learning was a viable idea and helped me feel okay about giving our children that opportunity, too.

Creative Writing

We encouraged our children’s writing. Sometimes we gave them assignments, and then gave them personal input and told them what needed to be corrected.

Knowing that it was encouraging to write for a specific purpose, we included practical assignments. Once we had them write autobiographies to give their grandparents for Christmas. Another time we sent an article to a Christian Bible class magazine, and it was published. We saw writing as part of character, too. We encouraged letter writing and the writing of thank you notes.

I also required our children to write in journals — not diaries with personal thoughts, but journals that I would read sometimes. They had to write for ten minutes four times a week. The purpose of these was simply to write and not to worry about these writings being corrected. At first the journals were to be about what they were doing from day to day, but our youngest child, Mary Evelyn, asked for permission to write stories, poems, and songs in her journal sometimes. She credits those ten-minute-a-day journal assignments as the beginning for her future writing.

When we began giving these kinds of assignments to our children, I had no idea that we would form Notgrass History and that through that they would all write professionally. Those one-on-one critiques must have helped, too, because they are all good editors of each other’s work and of Ray’s and mine.

Drama

We are blessed to have a professional theater in a small city about an hour away from us, and we are thankful that it offers school day matinee tickets for homeschool groups. I volunteered to organize homeschool field trips to this theater so that I could choose what plays our children would get to see for only $4 per ticket. We saw many wonderful plays and had great discussions afterwards.

Eventually our children asked if they could write and produce plays. These became homeschool projects. At first they wrote Bible-based plays for our church’s youth group. Other mothers and I helped them with directing, costumes, and sets.

Mary Evelyn had the most interest in drama. When she was 15, she asked me if she could write a play for homeschoolers. I said, “Sure.” For a time that year, this was a large part of her English. The next year she wanted to do it again — and the next. Now she is 37, and, except for 2020, she has produced a play every year since then. For many years now, she has rented a professional performing arts center for the performances. Each play has been an historical musical that presents a Christian worldview.

During each year’s production, children hide spiritual truths in their hearts while experiencing a period of history. Mary Evelyn has a lot of family support. Her husband is amazing with sets. Bethany served many years as musical director, and John has played both lead and supporting roles and has provided video and editing assistance for the productions. Mary Evelyn’s in-laws have been a tremendous help, and I am blessed to continue as her assistant director, as I have since she was 15.

I love how homeschooling gave our family opportunities to use creative writing and drama to think about what God wants us to be thinking about.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true,
whatever is honorable, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence
and if anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.
Philippians 4:8

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