Day 52

The kids finished their book reports today. Sarah felt like Rachel and Sam both chose easy options for theirs and she chose the long way. I don't think I agree, but that's ok. Sarah wrote a significant amount more than the others, but I don't think she would have had to. Rachel said hers was very easy; she changed the point of view for a scene. I haven't read it yet. Sam finished his pictures and wrote a sentence about each one.

He likes to put his pen to the paper as long as it's drawing; but if it's writing, it feels like torture to him. I don't mind his not writing much, because I know he has plenty in his head. We talk constantly, and he composes plenty of things. It just kills him to write the words. I think his brain clenches up when he thinks about committing it to paper. I do know that eventually he'll have to do it more, so I think I'll have to take this year to slowly have him do more and more.

We had some great dinner conversation tonight thanks to Julie Bogart's Writer's Jungle webinar. She talked about revision, and I mentioned to Sarah that it would probably help her to listen to it. It was about revision being a re-visioning of your writing. It's so much more than editing or proofreading. You can't expect to have your writing come out of you just the way it ought to stay--at least not most of the time. We decided that Jeff should write something for her to revise. I'm so excited for her to try that. She edited Rachel's book with her, but that's not creating a new vision for the piece. I think it could be liberating for her to just rip something apart. I hope that gives her the freedom to do that to her own writing.

I decided that Sam probably needs to slow down on the Pre-Algebra. The procedures, of course. I'm planning on seeing if he can figure out for himself how to do the problems before telling him how. Hopefully that way he'll be able to do something in his brain with the procedures, and they'll stick. We'll see.

See you next week!