6 Traits of Writing: A Review

If I was interested.

Are you Serious?

Of course I’m interested! Yes! Yes! Yes!

We love Evan Moor!
(And now we LOVE Timberdoodle too!)

In fact we are currently using FOUR other Evan Moor titles in our classroom!

So you can imagine I jumped at the opportunity!

And to top it off, I got to choose which title I wanted!

(I know, right? Someone pinch me!)

If you’ve never heard of Timberdoodle, it is an online store run by a homeschooling family of seven. They offer amazing curriculum packages, learning resources, and educational toys! In fact, they have an adorable “About Us” page here, describing how their company got started!

While your there check out their Doodle Dollars rewards program, …..fantastic idea!

Anyway, after much oogling over all their Evan Moor titles, I decided that what we really needed around here was a bit more focus on writing skills.

So here’s what we picked out:
Daily Six Trait Writing Grade 1
Daily Six Trait Writing Grade 2

We got started on them right away!

Immediately my first reaction was….FINALLY!

I have been looking for something with simple daily
tasks that my children can complete with little or no help
(Did I mention I also have a newborn and a Toddler to deal with)
So semi-Independent workbooks are a real blessing around here!

And both of these lesson books include 25 weeks of daily writing instruction, with very similar topics, which is fantastic for us because I can review with each child on different levels. In fact if you like, you can check out all 25 topics and even look through sample pages from here.

Bub (5) was really excited to have his own book:

So excited that he apparently chewed off his eraser.
(Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t swallow them)

And these daily tasks were just the right size for my amazing reader, but reluctant writer. The lessons also sneak in a tiny bit of handwriting which went completely unnoticed and he tackled with ease. (Which was very interesting to say the least…..Hmmm?)

And Sis, she jumped right in too, enjoying the opportunities to express her own ideas. She is also a bit of a reluctant writer,and the small daily assignments give her a bit more confidence and voice that I’ve already noticed spilling over into her other language lessons.

The only issue I had with them was the layout of the 5th day (Friday). Since these are daily tasks, there are worksheets for each of the days of the week, except for Friday. For Friday there is a Writing Prompt that is described in the initial Instructions for the weeks tasks, but there is no corresponding page for children to write their assignment on. So to find Fridays assignment children have to flip backward 4 pages and then have their own paper available for the writting assignment.

It’s really not that big of a deal….seriously, I can be a bit anal particular sometimes, and it just took a little coaching on my part to remind the children to turn their books back on Friday for the Writing Prompt. I just thought I’d mention it in case any of you are anal particular like me.

But, Overall I’m very pleased with these books, they provide great review opportunities for Sissy and fill in the gaps to make sure that I didn’t miss something with our core language curriculum. For Bub the First Grade book serves as his first introduction to writing, and he is flourshing with the way the lessons are set up.

We are enjoying these titles so much that I’m thinking that we’ll be snagging future levels very soon!

As a member of Timberdoodle’s Blogger Review Team I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion and review