Victory
I love writing, it has always been my most favorite thing to do. Whether journal writing, or writing a story, bible class material, e-mail, snail-mail, it doesn’t matter. Putting together thoughts onto paper, or onto a computer screen is to me a wonderful way to express thoughts, feelings, concerns, joys or even sorrows
Last year I was ready to pull my hair out over the Class subject of writing. I truly wondered if little man would ever learn to write a story. In fact I got so frustrated at his frustration that I literally gave up. Somewhere around January of last school year, I completely ditched writing from the curricular line-up. I mean every day there were tears, sometime mine, other times his. I couldn’t quite figure out how to teach him to engage his mind in a way that completely imagined something new. He has a wonderful capacity to memorize, to remember something he saw or did or even experienced. But the idea of free-thinking a new idea seemed completely lost to him. Or so I thought.
Over the summer one of his cousins was visiting. They were in the classroom playing “school.” J was the teacher and he went to the chalk board and started telling her a story and as he told it to her he began drawing it on the board. It didn’t take me long at all to realize he was making up a brand new story. So I grabbed a pen and began writing down exactly what he was saying. I couldn’t believe how fast I was writing. When he was done, he had a great picture and I had a piece of paper with a brand new story that was “written” by my little man. I showed it to him and said, “You wrote a story.” He said “Uh, huh you wrote it.” I explained that while I wrote it down it was his story. He just went on playing like it was no big deal, but I knew without a doubt I had just had an ah ha moment.
So once school started, once a week I would put together little construction paper “books,” then have him draw a story. Once he drew it, I’d ask him to go back and write down the story. The drawing part went really well. He loves drawing. The writing it down part was still a huge struggle. Some times he wouldn’t finish the story other times he’d finish it but grumble and complain the whole time.
Yesterday as usual I had him draw a story. Then we moved on to other subjects. I intended to have him finish writing it tomorrow. But, when he saw today’s to do list, he asked “Mom, why don’t you have writing on here?” I replied, “Oh, you can finish your book tomorrow.”
He said, “No, I want to finish it today!”
I said, “Oh, OK. That’s fine go ahead and add writing to your list.”
I was thinking… ‘WHAT? He wants to write?! VICTORY!’
Now, when I say victory, I must say his sentence structure is no where near where it should be, paragraphs are non-existent and grammar is quite in need of work, even the pictures are squiggly and messy which is really unusaual for him. With that being said, I realize those things can come in time. For now, for today we reached a place where my little man WANTED to write! My heart was and is filled with joy! Slow and steady wins everytime!
4 Comments
Sylvia
Looks great! Way to go Jonathan!
This Week @ Great Peace Academy
Thanks Sylvia, I sure am a proud Momma!
Samantha Kelley
That is a victory!
This Week @ Great Peace Academy
I can’t believe how much he’s grown. It’s victories like this that remind me of why i home-educate!