Druidawn®
Welcome to the
World of Druidawn®
For Students
Students of Druidawn®, past and present, this is your gateway into the world you know and love. Here you can learn all about the history, people, creatures, and territories of Druidawn®. Converse with fellow players, get your character added to the Druidawn® Hall of Fame, and much more in the locked pages of this website.
Email us for membership access: druidawncreations@hotmail.com
Current and past enrolled Druidawn® students click below for members-only access to the gateway into the magical world of Druidawn®!
For Teachers
and Parents
In this site you will find information about our creative writing clubs, language arts tutoring services, online summer workshops, helpful articles on unique learning styles, vision therapy, how to improve your fiction writing, how to write stronger essays, how to work with anxiety in children and so much more. Have a browse through the Parents and Teachers section of our website for over 50 pages of helpful information and registration forms.
Druidawn® Academy, our 501(c)(3) scholarship program is discussed in detail including our short range and long range goals as a company dedicated to serving the literacy needs of students from all socio-economic backgrounds regardless of their ability to pay.
Legends of Druidawn® is an interactive fantasy role-playing game that encourages reluctant writers to get words on paper by creating characters that move up levels based on how much they write. Legends of Druidawn® reintroduces the lost art of verbal storytelling to a generation that desperately needs this method of expression as a learning and motivational tool. The results have been immediate and nothing short of astounding (see parent testimonials).
Click below to register for creative writing clubs, private tutoring, writing mentoring and our exciting summer workshops. Some scholarships are now available!
Spotlight Product
SpeculationTM
A Writing and Talking Improv Party Game
It's finally here!
Our newest creative interaction game!
Great for parties, traveling, home-schooling, and classroom settings.
Can be played with 3-12 or more people and is appropriate for ages 8+. Speculation is challenging to the imagination yet incredibly simple to learn and play. Your purchase of $25.00 + US postage includes game book, two game notepads,
and four custom pencils.
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Speculation is a fund-raising project to help our Druidawn Academy Scholarship Fund. 50% of the profits raised by this game will go to pay for students who wish to participate in Druidawn but are unable to afford our services, as well as teacher training as we expand our staff to accommodate these new students.
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Order your copy below where it says Buy Now
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NOTE: Quoted postage is for the US only. We can mail to other countries for an extra fee. Email us to find out the fee to add.
Spotlight Picture
Druidawn Academy is our 501(C)(3) nonprofit scholarship fund to help students who are disadvantaged and otherwise unable to pay for our services. Our ultimate goal is to serve as many students as we can regardless of their socio-econonic status.
Please see Druidawn Academy in the Parents and Teachers Section of this website for more information. If you'd like to donate to our cause, click the button below. 100% of your donation will be given in the form of a scholarship to a student in need, and you'll receive a thank-you message directly from the child you have helped. Thank you for your generosity!
The Surprising Hidden Benefits of Druidawn
Our Druidawn families already know that our unique writing/gaming system helps students to overcome writing reluctance and anxiety, especially for those who struggle with unique learning styles such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD and autism. Our clients also know that Druidawn offers a supportive community where students who love to write can get positive feedback on their stories from their peers and teachers, and receive assistance with their publishing goals. Many of our Druidawn families have been excited to discover that the process of writing fiction (including plot development, adding details, metaphors, vibrant characters, and setting descriptions) helps students to become better technical writers and critical readers. It turns out constructing engaging fiction stories is quite similar to constructing solid essays and analyzing literature.
But here are some surprising hidden benefits of Druidawn that even our most devoted clients might not realize.
Druidawn actually helps students with problem-solving skills, social skills, team work, and learning how to make wise choices in real life. So many of our very bright children don’t have enough life experiences to use common sense when making decisions. Many don’t have a strategy for how to tackle problems that have too many possible solutions. They might forget to wait their turn and listen to the insights of their teammates. They might miss spoken and unspoken social cues. They might be baffled by the concept of cause and effect. Druidawn practices all of these important critical thinking skills in a safe imaginary world by using situations that mirror real life events, despite the magical spin.
For instance, when trying to open a locked door, it shockingly doesn’t occur to many of our students to simply look for a hidden key. They might try to use their swords to hack at the lock or try to burn the door down, but it might not even occur to them to look around the room to see if anything else could be useful. They most likely won’t think to listen and use their other senses first before entering a strange area. They could be in a fight on a sandy beach and never think to throw sand in their opponent’s eyes in order to escape. Many attempt to kill the creatures they encounter before finding out if the creatures could be of help to them. Or they might forget to make use of the basic items they are carrying in their backpacks, or the items found in their environment. A chair can make a good weapon or can be used as a shield or as an object to break through a window.
Our clients might not know this, but our quests are not just designed to be interactive scenarios that entertain and inspire story-writing. They are thoughtfully crafted epic journeys designed to put our students in situations that encourage them to practice critical thinking, problem-solving, team work, environmental awareness and social skills with every session.
Here are some examples of the thoughtful obstacles your children regularly face while playing Druidawn:
Learning how to tame wild animals and mystic creatures by being cautious, patient, thoughtful, observant of the creatures’ natural behaviors, and using lures such as their favorite foods.
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Solving a civil war between two disagreeing sides of a city by finding natural resources that all of the people of both sides can use to help boost their economies.
Helping a discouraged friend learn how to read because he was disadvantaged as a child and unable to go to school. As a result, he can’t keep up with the homework assigned in Shadow Knight Training.
Having dinner with the Centaurs and learning proper table manners and social etiquette so as not to offend their society. Players have to watch for social cues and learn to interpret body language in this scenario.
Coaxing, without killing, a giant sea monster (the Kraken) to move to a new home because the current one he is occupying is disrupting the mining of cryllicon, a natural resource used by all people on Druidawn.
Rescuing a neglected child from an evil overlord and becoming this impulsive child’s primary nurturer and protector. The child has tremendous magical powers and needs someone to teach her how to modulate her emotions so she won’t hurt anyone if she doesn't always get what she wants.
Participating in a science fair, inventing new items, and coming to understand a brilliant but perpetually frustrated evil overlord who is cursed by his desire to create new things in a world that doesn’t allow for technological progress of any kind.
Learn how to haggle to get the best bargain prices as they buy items and trade their goods for coins in a medieval marketplace. Learn how to recognize a con artist and how to protect their belongings against thieves.
Do we have lots of action and fight scenes? Sure, but unlike many other games, Druidawn characters are not rewarded for killing. In fact, they are forewarned that killing needlessly will cost their characters Honor, Loyalty, and Compassion attribute points. As will selfish behaviors like leaving their friends behind, stealing from or otherwise harming innocent people, and not doing their share to help. On the flip side, they gain points to Intelligence and Wisdom for clever problem-solving and making good choices. They gain points to Honor, Loyalty, Leadership and Compassion for kind and caring acts, team-work and demonstrations of friendship. Even if a player wants to play the part of a villainous character, they still have to face the natural consequences of their actions, such as the possibility of getting caught and going to jail. The higher the attribute points, the more advantages their characters have in dice rolls, so attribute scores are a good way to reward positive actions and deter negative ones.
The Druidawn scenarios are designed to be novel-length, complex, emotionally engaging, challenging but not overwhelming, and filled with moral dilemmas that make our students work harder to solve problems in creative ways. When our students are given situations that they must solve as a team, they learn to listen to each other, think outside the box, and make use of their environment. Many of our quests focus on befriending rather than killing, on problem-solving rather than destroying, and on learning more about the characters they meet so that they can come to understand what motivates people to act in certain ways. Finally, they learn the principles of cause and effect. Their actions create logical and natural results. These are essential life skills that can have a huge impact as our students mature into young adults. We believe that a safe, narrative-based gaming environment like Druidawn is one of the best ways to teach some real-world lessons, and we are thrilled to be able to offer these hidden benefits to your children.
QUICK TIPS FOR STRUGGLING WRITERS
Does your child struggle with spelling? Try this:
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Use Rebecca Sitton’s List of 1200 High Frequency Words as your base
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Start with the list your child can’t spell with 100% accuracy.
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Spotlight just one new word every day and access several different modes of practicing that word, including visual, auditory, and tactile such as below:
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Write the word in bright colors - make art out of the letters
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Draw a tight outline around the word a few times to get used to its shape, where are the tall letters and the short ones?
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Stare at the word until it makes a mental picture
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Close eyes and spell the word frontwards and then backwards
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Form the word out of clay or sand or with small candies or using something else highly tactile
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Put the word on note cards and pin it up in the bedroom, bathroom, etc.
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At the end of each week, test to see if the child has memorized the seven words they practiced that week. Redo any they miss.
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Always offer incentives and rewards for each list level that the child completes
The writing process is extremely complex and should be broken into smaller skill sets until a child is advanced enough to integrate the various skills together at the same time.
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For struggling writers, use voice-to-text or dictation in order to get their thoughts onto paper.
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Practice keyboarding and push it as a separate but highly necessary skill (use a fun keyboarding game program for this).
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Practice spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure during the editing process, NEVER during the first draft! Worrying about all of those corrections during a first draft can shut them down. Always double reward the editing process because it’s horribly slow, dry and boring!
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If a child hates writing and their handwriting is poor, have them practice handwriting as an art form - maybe calligraphy - instead of forcing them to handwrite in order to communicate. Reserve communication for voice-to-text or keyboarding. Handwriting can be so agonizingly slow for some children that it can put them off of the writing process altogether. Remember the most important part of writing is getting their thoughts onto paper, however we can make that happen with the least amount of pain to the child.