I did it again. Started another blog.
Educating Magpies: Life Without School is my new blog home for all things home schooling related. It’s still bare bones, but I have a few posts up – my most recent about bad attitudes and perfection – I hope you check it out if you are interested in following our home school journey.
Paper Bridges will continue to be my book blog for reviews, giveaways and commentary from a Christian reader’s perspective.
Thanks! See you here or over at Educating Magpies.
Check it out: when newbie hens begin to lay, their eggs are slightly smaller. The egg on the left is from a young chicken. The difference is obvious.
We’re getting more eggs everyday. And all I can say is: It’s about time these ladies started earning their keep. With Susan’s love for baking, and neighbors wanting to buy fresh eggs, we can’t keep up.
As a mother, and as a lover of fine words and stories, I will never grow weary of watching my children fall in love with reading and books.
This week I witnessed Susan’s relationship with books deepen.
We were at the library, and as chance had it (or maybe it was a God-ordained meeting?), our dear friends came in right behind us. This is the one family in our homeschool fellowship that my children adore, and I believe the feeling is mutual on their part. When we meet, there is much hugging, giggling and shouts of joy. Because we are both homeschooling families, we don’t see much of each other. Busy at home, busy with activities. So a spontaneous, accidental meet-up in the children’s section of the library is a lovely treat.
As I chatted with the mother, I noticed Susan and her friend kneeling on the floor, heads bent towards each other, in between the shelves. They were talking, sharing secrets about something, I was sure of it. I hoped it had to do with books. Usually when we go to the library, I suggest titles to my eleven year old. And she resists, unwilling to try all my old favorites and all the new titles that look appealing to me. Susan would get books about baking or collecting TY Beanie Babies, which is fine, I’m glad she’s interested in collecting and cooking. But what of the fiction? Why wasn’t she falling in love with all those characters I adored as a young girl?
I knew Susan’s friend loved fiction, her mother told me both her daughters read constantly. As I peeked around the bookshelf to watch the girls, I hoped my Susan was considering bringing home fiction this time.
Sure enough, when it came time to leave, Susan had selected several books in the Pony Club series, a Wishbone book and an American Girl title about a blond named Julie. Finally! I thought to myself.
Susan read during the drive home. I think she may have gone straight to her room to read when we got there. Needless to say, she did a lot of reading in a short period of time. Those were easy reads for her, but that’s not the point. For the first time, my girl was captured with an imaginary world found in fiction, so taken in that reading was the activity chosen above all other enticements (computer, a sibling, writing or play).
In two days, Susan had finished all her books and asked to go back to the library for more. We went and she took more books home. Again, Pony Club, American Girl and Wishbone. She read as we walked to the car.
Me again: Finally!
But the story doesn’t stop there.
Last night, the two of us were out for her 4H club meeting. The bookstore open late. Could we go? I’m never one to pass on an opportunity to be surrounded with the written word, and I want to encourge her, so we went.
And this time our vistit was remarkadly different.
Susan went straight to the juvenile fiction section, found City of Ember and embraced it like an old friend. No Pony Club this time. She said she wanted a “thicker chapter book.” Last night there was no plea for a Klutz book, what she usually wants; she’s crazy for the ones with the fill in the blank pages.
Right now, it’s almost 10:30 and she came out of her bedroom looking overtired. Susan fed the bunnies, ignoring food and Internet, and is now back in her bedroom, door shut. It’s a gray day and we have no plans to take us away from the house. I suspect she will be finished with her new book by nightfall.
It’s going to be a beautiful day.
I’ve been wanting to write about it for ages, since July for one of them, and I have no still pictures. Lame, lame, lame, Monica. You must have glorious color pictures! I know! Sorry, Blog. Please, forgive.
I’m going to record a quickie blurb about both anyway, so I can mark the activities here so I can find them years from now when I’m wondering what the heck we did that was fun. I’m sure I will forget.
No. 1 Activity sans picture: First Lego League Robotics Competition. Way cool. We got to hang out with the High Schoolers. Very much fun. My boys were in their glory. Husband – I convinced him to go too, because in my mind he is head of our Science Department – enjoyed it. Tween girl – sort of, eventually. Littlest girl. Yes, we all enjoyed very much. It’s a lot tougher to drive those robots than it looks.
No. 2 Activity sans picture: Shakespeare play at Raritan Valley Community College. A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, a student adaptation. Kids loved it. Having the boys listen to the Jim Weiss version before we went was a good idea. All four hung on every word, every scene. Yes, even my four year old. True, this was only an hour play, but they got it. The next day, Peter called his brother an acorn as an insult. Edmund ran around referring to himself as Puck.
Ha. Acorn.
There you go. Sorry this is isn’t so flashy. I just want to get it out of my head so I can replace it with something else. Now as long as my blog doesn’t blow up, I’ll be okay.
Okay?
“My story was published on Nicktropolis yesterday, Mommy.”
My story. This was a short story Susan wrote without any help from me, and as a intentional home schooling mom, that is saying a lot. I like to think I had enough sense to stay out of her way, allowing her to discover her love for writing and words on her own.
But let me back up for a second. I’m getting ahead of the beginning of the story of how this all came to be. This is a post about my eldest – whom I refer to as Susan. I’ve recorded my son’s reading journey and how I’ve come to let go of my expectations for him. Now I want to tell you about Susan. This is her story: her birth as a writer.
The beginning
Susan’s home schooling began at age six with math, oral grammar and lots of read alouds. (You can read earlier posts about teaching her here and here.)
By age seven, she was reading on her own. We continued with oral grammar lessons and read alouds. I assigned her books that she was interested in reading, like Little House on the Prairie or a Rod and Staff reader. We dabbled with history. She did Awana. She loved attending church. She visited with Grandma. She lived life.
The one thing Susan did not do was write. No book reports. No creative writing. No required writing of any kind. I did attempt the first level of Writing Stands, but it was quickly abandoned. “She’s not ready for this” was my reasoning. She did copy work easily. Sometimes Susan would write a letter to a friend, but it was always her idea and for fun.
Whenever we came across a writing assignment in Spelling Workout or Story of the World, I would have her skip it. The one thing I did require from her was narrations. And, how she hated those! Those narrations, done a few times a week, was the closest she ever got to a formal writing assignment.
We continued with a mix of oral and written grammar lessons. Still reading lots of books; Susan developed a fondness for non-fiction (reference books, Fandex and the dictionary are a few). We traveled. We stayed busy.
And she played a lot with her non-reading, younger siblings.
Connecting it all
Susan read books and magazines to her brothers and sister; sometimes the text they shared would become part of their imaginary play. Susan began making up her own stories based on toys and imaginary creatures of their playtime. This oral storytelling, along with input from her siblings, morphed into her forming her own stories in the privacy of her room, or in the backyard, away from interruptions – a talkative toddler and pesky boys (and perhaps even me, her hovering, homeschooling mother.)
Needless to say, it wasn’t much of a leap to begin writing these stories down on to the computer.
All of this without formal writing lesson from me.
This week, at age of 11, she proudly read me a short story she submitted to a kid’s website, thrilled with the comments she gets from her peers. My girl is a confident writer. Her grammar and punctuation are excellent; spelling fine. The art of well-crafted fiction she will be learning for the rest of her life, but for now – most importantly – she enjoys writing. It’s fun, bringing her joy and a sense of accomplishment.
Now if only I can transfer that passion to fractions…
