Have you ever had a fake (or real) tattoo? If so, describe the experience. Then write your thoughts about permanent tattoos. Are they a good or bad idea? Explain.
New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.
Image by Tommy Wong (cc cropped, tinted)
One of the hidden side effects of “not liking writing” is “not liking self.” We don’t talk about it much. We think that resistance to writing is a resistance to school or hard work. We tend to believe our kids are being disobedient or lazy.
To “hate” writing as a child usually means the young person has not yet made the connection that what is going on inside is worthy of the page! Heck, many adults have yet to make that connection! The pervasive critique of mechanics and raw thought makes many would-be writers withdraw from public scrutiny.
When we accept the idea that children “hate writing,” we unwittingly turn off the tap to joy in learning. Writing is the chief expression of self in academic life. Even higher math requires explanation and proofs in writing.
Children want to be seen as successful, bright, and capable. If they risk their private thoughts, ideas, and flights of imagination and are met with judgment, they decide that learning itself is not worth the effort. By high school, some stuck writers have checked out of traditional education all together.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
The writing life lives inside your young writers right now—no matter how poor their punctuation, spelling, handwriting, and grammar.
Kids need to know that the writer inside is alive and well—that the mechanics of writing are a necessary challenge to be mastered over time, but not a referendum on the child’s success as a learner or writer.
You can do this for your child every time you value the writing risk. Hold the writing in your palm tenderly, with a look of love. Yes, even the writing that says, “I hate writing” and “This is dumb.”
Underneath those objections is a quieter cry: “What if what I put on paper makes your face look worried or disappointed? What will I do then?”
Start early—value the writing risk, love the child’s self expression, get as much of it to paper as possible, hold it as a sacred crystal vase—sturdy, beautiful, fragile. See the light refracted through it.
Work on mechanics as “no big deal” and “we all get there eventually” and “you don’t have to be a good speller to be a GREAT writer.”
Children raised this way see learning as open to them, and education as satisfying.
This is the gift you can give your children if you protect them from hating writing.
You can do this!
Brave Writer mom Misty sent this to us. Not only is it a super piece of writing by student Maya, it’s also an awesome example of gently helping your child revise her work! (Misty’s comments to her daughter Maya are in italics.)
I marvled as I rubbed my fingers back and forth on the hat feeling every bump and every ridge in the well-made sombrero.
This intro caught my attention! Can you add more description of the hat here in this sentence? Maybe the color? Add a simile or adjective?
I got it in Mexico when I was a little girl.
My baby… Can you add more description? Adjectives?
I remeber exactly were I was, it was at a vendor in front of a restaurant, I rember the smell of the mouth watering smell of Authentic Mexican food and seeing the hat and exclaiming. “Daddy look at that hat!”
I like the personal experience you brought to the story. The smell of mouth watering Authentic Mexican food is a great addition. Can you describe what caught your eye? Was it the shimmery silver cording or the shiny sequins?
I emeditately ran to it in happiness and excitement of being in a new place. I snatched it and violently put in on my tangled curls.
I love the adjectives and verbs in this second sentence! Is there another word for “put” that would match the descriptive word “violently”? What was it about the hat that made you happy and excited to be in a new place?
I rember rubbing the sides of it as I did then. And that smell still settled in the hat today.
Couple of questions with these two sentences: Do you remember how it felt to rub the hat then when you rub it now? What smell settled in the hat today? The smell of Mexican food? Just need to clarify your thoughts.
And of course when I listened to the hat (yup I listened to a hat) the same merrachi band that came to our table played in my head, And I rember putting on the hat and strumming my little guitar that caught my eye before the hat I stood up and played with them
This is a great memory about what sounds you heard in your mind during the sound portion of the keen observation exercise. This is a long run-on sentence, but that’s ok! It was a freewrite, we’ll clean it up later.
Can you clear up the events that took place? Like, did you buy the hat and then go to the Authentic Mexican Restaurant for lunch? Did you buy a little guitar or was it borrowed? How did it feel to play with a Mariachi band?
And here’s the finished product!
by Maya
I marveled as I rubbed my fingers back and forth, feeling every bump, ridge and fiber in the well-made pink and platinum sombrero. I got it in Mexico, about six years ago, when I was a little girl. I remember exactly where I was when it caught my eye. We were in front of an authentic Mexican restaurant with the smell of mouth-watering food filling the air. My eye wandered to the hat vendor and I exclaimed, “Daddy, look at that hat!” As I ran to it, happiness and excitement flowed from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I snatched it and violently planted it on my tangled curls. I remember reaching up and rubbing the sides of the sombrero those six years ago, as I do now. The smell of the Mexican food still settles in the hat or maybe just in the crevices of my mind. And of course when I listened to the hat (yep, I listened to a hat) the same Mariachi band that visited our table at the restaurant, played in my head. I remember standing on my chair, putting on my little sombrero and strumming my little guitar that my dad had bought me earlier in the day. At that exact moment, I felt Mexican.
Image by Brave Writer mom Misty
We started our first school day of 2015 with a breakfast tea. Honestly, it all came together wonderfully at the last minute. I had other plans originally but I am so thankful that poetry is the way we began our school year. On Sundays my husband makes coffee cake for breakfast. So, I put coffee cake on a pretty platter, eggs on a platter, I whipped up some homemade whipped cream, and cut strawberries. These were all items I had around the house! I already had the fresh flowers on the table. They are from my garden. I pulled out a tablecloth and fancy china. We were all out of tea so I used orange juice instead.
I feel like modifying is one of my strengths with 6 kids between the ages of 3 and 12. I pulled out a lot of poetry books that and set them at the end of the table. Each child took turns picking a poem and reading it aloud. My 5 year old isn’t reading but she still picked out a poem and one of her siblings read it for her. Even my 3 year old got up with a book and pretended to read from it. She probably received the most applause. It was such a perfect way to begin our new school year and I am confident my kids will remember it. This week we are going to do a baseball themed poetry dinner and daddy will be included.
Have a most blessed day,
Heather
As educators, we sometimes struggle to trust the learning processes that come naturally to us in the home. We see play and devalue it—thinking that play is what children do while they are immature, but when they are older they’ll have to understand the value of work. We look for signs that our kids are outgrowing play and becoming more serious people. We help that process along by assigning work, chores, responsibilities. We hold them accountable to clean up messes and to have good manners when around other adults.
When it comes to learning, we tend to think that real learning is happening when pages are complete, or when a set of skills has been memorized and accurately applied to problems or leads to reading and writing.
Brain research says otherwise.
Today’s break-throughs in the classroom are directly related to the level of value teachers put on learning that engages the whole person: mind, body, brain, emotions. We are more aware today than ever that learning is a set of interconnections, housed in a personality—a person!
You, as a homeschooler, are uniquely poised to be the most powerful educator in your child’s life simply by taking advantage of home and all its amazing supportive properties for learning.
Before we look at how to turn your home into that remarkable environment for learning, it helps to read and think about the research first. It helps to consider the principles of learning that lead to breakthroughs in understanding.
If you want a more in-depth look at how to apply these principles in your specific family, check out The Homeschool Alliance! Our community will give you both the tools, support, and feedback you crave. I’m there every day relating to our family members and we’ve seen huge growth in the last year from those who have participated. Hope you’ll join us!
