I\'m Summer, a mouthy, sarcastic bitch. I\'m passionate about natural birth, long term breastfeeding, and living naturally. I curse too much, love tattoos, and will some day be crushed to death by my book collection. I homeschool, dream of gardening, and swing to the left. 
Creative Writing – Fall In Love With The Words
I loves me some Mrs. G. And I love her guest posting over at Pioneer Woman some fabulous homeschooling posts. So you know I bookmarked her post about teaching creative writing to kids Kindergarten through 5th grade. Especially since her main advice is to just let them fall in love with words before you start freaking out about perfect grammar and such. It doesn’t matter if they are perfect writers if they hate it too much to want to do it.
Please trust Mrs. G. when she tells you that young children just need to experience the joy of writing, the thrill of telling a story or describing an amazing experience without being bogged down with rules, regulations and red pens. When you read a young child’s writing, the only thing you should say is cool or fantastic or wow. The minute you start laying down the law about how this would sound better or that’s not correct you start messing with the magic (and, people, it really is magic) of pencil and paper. You grammar and spelling zealots (Mrs. G. gets you, she really does) and perfectionists need to bite your tongue. If Mrs. G. ran the world, she wouldn’t start introducing any hard and fast writing rules until late 4th or 5th grade (and even then she would tread lightly).
Mrs. G. isn’t saying that children shouldn’t learn proper English. She’s just saying they should fall in love with writing first. Let them.
I keep a notebook of wide lined paper in the coffee table here for Evan to use whenever he wants. Sometimes he draws pictures on it, sometimes he writes numbers or letters, and sometimes he writes stories. Just, you know, for the fun of it. Every time he does he falls in love with writing, with sharing stories through the written word. No spacing, backwards letters, and forgetting punctuation. I don’t care, I just want him to love writing right now.
Red Dog The Red dog did play
The dog ran to The snake
I love when he spontaneously starts doing things like this. That’s the sort of stuff that makes homeschooling worth it.
2 Responses to “Creative Writing – Fall In Love With The Words”