We’re thrilled to announce that June Writers Academy is now live!

Mid-October is usually the time of year when parents begin to notice if their hopes for their child’s development in school are not matching reality.

Sure, playing around with words is fun. That’s about 50% of why we made our Play With Words videos, which are perfect for young kids who are learning to read and write. But that’s not the only reason. Playing with words is also a wonderful way to pass time on a bus or train ride with a kid (particularly if you’re tired of, for example, discussing Paw Patrol), help children develop stronger phonemic awareness, and make words relevant and useful to their lives.

At the end of each chapter of the June Writers program, we ask your child to complete three tests and one self-reflection exercise. The purpose of these tests is to check whether your child has mastered the concepts and skills in the chapter, give you and your child feedback on the current strengths and weaknesses of their writing, and figure out the best next steps in their development as writers and thinkers.

We frequently ask your child to compare their answers to ours and then record themselves explaining any differences.

Lesson 2.8 is about writing paragraph content in chronological order, but it’s also about teaching kids to think about the best ways to organize their thoughts.

What new words and phrases can you make with “No Smoking, Drinking, Eating, or Graffiti?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

What new words and phrases can you make with “Get Paid To Sleep?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

What new words and phrases can you make with “Push Button For Walk Signal?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

What new words and phrases can you make with “Not A Through Street?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

What new words and phrases can you make with “Cross Traffic Ahead?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

What new words and phrases can you make with “Road Closed To Vehicles?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

What new words and phrases can you make with “Look Out For Traffic?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

Check out a sample practice from Level 4.

Practice 3.8.3: Playing the Believing Game 1 is the first half of a big new skill for kids: critical analysis of the content and form of a text. The Believing and Doubting Games ask kids to play pretend and first, imagine that they believe absolutely everything in the text and use that believing brain to analyze what the text is saying and doing.

In Practice 2.3.3: Creating Argument Sentences, we teach kids to build argument sentences that already contain two layers of thought.

See what a typical Greek and Latin roots practice looks like in our curriculum.

See what a typical practice looks like in Level 1.

In Chapter 5, we introduce your child to a more complex editing system—a system not usually taught until high school or college, if ever.

What new words and phrases can you make with “No Parking In Red?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!

What new words and phrases can you make with “Road Work Ahead?”

Our free wordplay videos are fun ways to help your blossoming reader fall in love with words. Watch for inspiration and then find your own signs to play with out in the world!