Notes from a homeschool mom
The following comes from a number of exchanges with Brave Writer mom Carla:
At the beginning of the year
Just a quick note to say “Hooray!” about a comment that my son made as we were working on his travel journal entry from a recent trip to CO. He was filling in answers to “I saw…” and “I felt….”, etc with as much alliteration as he could muster. He was clearly amused with his efforts and said,”I tried to match what the Incorrigible Children of Ashton place would say about that.”
I was delighted because I had just read the chapter in Writer’s Jungle that talked about encouraging them to emulate their favorite authors, and here he was doing it all on his own!
Hooray for Brave Writer and Hooray for my little brave writer!!
I know it’s just a little thing, but I loved that there was a spark of the right idea in his mind.
Shortly after
Encouraging thought for the day-
My son was entertain himself writing a “book” that included this sentence:
“She held a baby that squirmed in her arms like a rosy worm wiggling in the freshly dewed soil.”
(I wasn’t sure if you could use the word dew as a verb so we ended up changing that to “in the dew covered soil,” but I loved his original thought so much that I wanted to share it!
He was really proud of the sentence. He said, “I could’ve just said that the baby wiggled, but I really wanted to make it sound like Penelope! I am going to do a whole bunch of these!” (We are in the fourth book of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series, which we learned of from The Arrow.)
He was so enthusiastic about using flowery language. It really filled up my heart with joy! Thank you for what you have given our family!!
Recently
We started our Language Arts co-op yesterday (which would be more aptly named the Brave Writer co-op!!) and my friend, whose kids are new to homeschooling, said their favorite part was learning about the punctuation in the poem we were studying! What?!?! Now THAT is a successful day! Thank you for The Arrow, which is what I use as a guide for studying any literature! You have really taught me how to explore it for all it’s worth!
(I will add that I had the moms from our co-op watch the writing workshop with their kids, and they all LOVED it! One fourth grade girl said, “Mom, I really like her! She is so cool!” My kids felt the same. So know that despite the random yawns some folks were sending, your enthusiasm for writing and for encouraging kids made its impact! It certainly didn’t hurt that you gave a shout out to two of the girls! The kids LOVED that! It reminded me of Romper Room when I would wait desperately to hear my name called, but then when she actually did say the name Carla, I freaked out and went crying to my mom for fear that she could actually see me through the TV. Hee hee! But I digress…..).
Carla
