I received a 50% off discount on this item from Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
As I have mentioned before, we’ve brought our homeschool back home this year and are using less options outside of the home. I was a little nervous about making sure my high schooler has everything she needs to succeed, but Timberdoodle has made it so much easier. They offer homeschool curriculum kits that are well rounded and include many of our favorite homeschool items.
Since we have been trying out the Jump In! book by Sharon Watson with our middle schooler for a bit and liked that program, we wanted to give the high school version, The Power in Your Hands a try.
The Power in Your Hands features 23 chapters with thorough instructions for writing in high school. High schoolers will learn about the structure on an essay, how to write persuasive essays, newspaper writing, literary analysis, descriptive essays, and personal testimonies. More than just reaching how to write, it also requires the students to think! They have to come up with answers for their essay and be able to fully defend those answers.
Currently, my daughter is on Chapter 5, which is focusing on persuasive essays. She has found this program to be very easy to follow along. It walks her right through creating essays. By the end of the program, she will have completed 23 essay writing assignments! I have enjoyed seeing what she comes up with for each assignment.
One aspect of The Power in Your Hands that we really like are the 14-minute Power Surges. These are writing prompts that encourage students to write without the pressure of being evaluated or graded every day. It includes all modes of writing such as exposition, persuasion, description, narration, and even poetry. Students write every Monday-Thursday for 14 minutes. They keep their work and then on Friday choose the paper they like best, proofread it, and then hand it in for a grade. It’s a great way to keep the students thinking without having too much pressure.
These Power Surges are only found in the The Power in Your Hands teacher’s guide. As homeschooling parents, many times we skip getting the teacher’s guides, but in this case, I find it very helpful. There are tips to show teachers how to properly grade the essays and samples of A, B, C, D, and F papers so I can compare it to my daughter’s work and assign an appropriate grade.
The only thing that I don’t like about The Power in Your Hands actually has nothing to do with the program, but the book itself. I would have loved it to be spiraled instead of a bound book so it would sit flat on a desk easier. It is a very thick book, being 417 pages. I may end up taking it somewhere to have it spiraled.
I have been very pleased with The Power in Your Hands and other programs by Sharon Watson. I plan to continue using them with my students each year. Depending on how you use it, The Power in Your Hands can be spread out to 2-3 years! I love curriculum that lasts a while!
For more information on this product and the Timberdoodle 11th Grade homeschool curriculum kit, please visit Timberdoodle’s website.
As a mom, I was pleased with the quality of the questions and how it made my daughter think. I will definitely consider other literature study guides from 
