This Week in Writing

Em's completed Ravensburger unicorn puzzle

This week I began requiring 15 minutes of daily journal writing, despite Susan Wise Bauer's permission to avoid journaling with journal-phobic kids. I need a way to assess writing growth, spelling and vocabulary usage skills, and even handwriting in El's unstructured (notice how I avoided the word creative?) writing. El needs a place to write naturally, without fear of criticism (however constructive it may be, it is still criticism.) He will pick up a pencil and "draw" stories every day, but he is not inclined to write sentences unless it is required for school. Thus, he hasn't done much independent writing. We'll see how it goes. I am okay with changing the time requirement as needed or giving prompts if requested but, so far, neither action has been necessary.

I also began requiring one all-cursive day per week. I put five days (M-F) into a jar and let El choose a random day. His cursive day this week was Tuesday, so on Tuesday everything he wrote had to be in cursive. I've been warning him that this day was coming. (Next semester he will have to choose two days out of the jar.) I don't know exactly how the public schools do it but I do know that, by fifth grade, everything I wrote had to be in cursive. My husband thinks I'm crazy to require cursive at all since everything is typed in our modern world. I gently remind him that he speaking to a classical homeschooler: "That's outdated!" does not compute. ;-)

Speaking of classical education, I think we are going to make the leap and bring Em home next year for school. I've worried since day one that the classical model wouldn't work for Em, and that worry has not gone away after teaching El for the past five months. He thrives on schedule and rigorous academic standards. She requires a generally predictable environment with laissez-faire academics. I just don't see a way to use WTM-style grammar stage curricula with my independent little "please give me food occasionally and let me do my own thing" bird. I feel like I'm back to homeschooling square one. I just don't know how to teach this child. Of course, I will figure it out and she will be taught the required subjects, but it's the methodology and the process of "getting there" that have me feeling bewildered right now.

A rare glimpse of the "please give me food occasionally and let me do my own thing" bird, seen here in her native habitat, perched atop the art supply cabinet with dry-erase board in hand.