The fun part in preparing that piece was going back to look at my notes on what the kids were doing over the years. I'm sharing some of those journal entries here.
Journal
entries on writing…(ages added)
Middle Munchkin (age 3) started
drawing stick people this week. These people have circle heads with stick
bodies. Her drawings of people looked like balloons blowing in the wind, but
the balloons had eyes, noses, and big smiles. She assured me they were people.
***
Munchkin #1 (age 4) tells me stories and I type them. I
break the story into scenes and print the pages for her, with room for
illustrations. We read the sentences together and she draws the pictures.
***
Munchkin Boy (age 6) says he doesn’t need to know how to
write anything but his name. At this point, that’s the letter, K. “What if you
need to write something else, like a grocery list?” I asked. He said I could
write it for him.
***
Middle Munchkin (age 8) started writing a
new Harry Potter story this week. She says she can barely read her handwriting
from the one that she was working on last year.
***
Munchkin #1 (age 10) is still working on her story. She hasn’t asked me to read it in quite
some time. Middle Munchkin, however, has been reading it and she loves it. In the car
the other day, she said to Munckin #1, “It makes me feel like I’m watching it. It’s
really good. I love it.”
***
We had a conversation about using
spellcheck on the computer. Munchkin #1 (age 10) asked if I thought it was okay for
her to use spellcheck to correct her work. I said, “Absolutely, it’s a tool and
you should learn to use it!” Then she told me she did use it, but it felt a bit
like cheating. I find it interesting that she uses a word that I so strongly
associate with school and school work. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about
cheating before, though I suppose she’s come across the idea in other places,
television and conversations with friends.
***
Munchkin Boy's handwriting (age 11) is not neat, but his spelling is superb and
he can get his point across. When he types, I would say his composition is well
beyond his years. He’s slack on things like capitalization and punctuation. He
says taking the time to capitalize slows him down too much.
***
***
Middle Munchkin (age 13) continues her obsession with
learning to write with her left hand. I can hardly tell the difference now if
she writes with the left or the right. She sometimes practices mirror writing,
as well -- both hands writing at the same time in opposite directions!
***
Munchkin #1 (age 15) is keeping a journal. She doesn’t
share it with me, but I know that she is writing in it pretty much daily. She
says this is one of the things she most enjoys about our current routine.
Together we have been working on the mechanics of writing. Most of the time,
this is me providing paragraphs of text that she edits. Sometimes we use
worksheets we find online, but I enjoy creating my own. She does very well at
this. She will usually pick out every single
error, from punctuation to spelling.
***
I found out yesterday that Middle Munchkin (age 15) signed up
for one of those Coursera courses. For a couple of weeks now she has been
taking a beginning college composition class. I had no idea. I don’t know how I
missed it. When I asked her about it, she said, “You sent us that link and said
there might be some stuff there we’d be interested in. I really want to learn
to write well, so I signed up for it.”
***
Munchkin #1 (age 18) asked me to review a paper she had
written for her honors composition class this morning. It was a last-minute
request for a quick review before she submitted the piece to her instructor. I
found one misspelled word (a word spelled correctly, but not the word she was
going for). I suggested she rein in her frequent use of semicolons. “I know,”
she said. “I just really love semicolons.”
***
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