Want to keep your kids busy for 3 hours???? Tell them they need to fill 2 pages in their journals given to them by Auntie Kristen and Uncle Kyle. Two bloody pages…3 bloody hours…and too many tears to count from Grace. OMG that kid will do ANYTHING to get out of writing. 

Liam crushed it actually. I have to say (proud mom moment) that he is such a voracious reader that his vocabulary has expanded to the point where his writing game has SIGNIFICANTLY improved. I am glad we didn’t drill the writing into him but just gave him more time and space to read complex books believing it would spill over. Bit of a gamble but he really hated writing and really loves reading and I didn’t want him to dig in further so we eased up. This was the first creative writing assignment he’s had in probably 4 or 5 months. He just wrote nonsense stories but that is perfectly fine. His printing was excellent, his grammar solid and exploratory and he used some very interesting turns of phrase that echoed the level of reading he enjoys (he’s reading basically every non-sexually graphic adult fantasy novel as well as the odd mystery novel we can find…he just finished Tolkien and needs suggestions ASAP…please send them!).  

Aden also did well with her writing…it took her a long time though because she can’t spell for SH*T. Like at all. I’m not kidding. About 90% of the words she used were spelled really really really wrong. Most of what she wrote I could understand because I know her…but some of it was beyond me. She of course could read it no problem so she read it to me and her ideas were super…but damn that spelling. Like she’s living in some alternate universe. SOOOO I am going to take a page out of Liam’s book (hahah get it?) and just double down on her reading time with more complicated books (she is about to give Harry Potter a try) in the hopes that she learns spelling through osmosis (I chose not to say ‘exposure’ here because of…you know…too close to he-who-must-not-be-named related content). We’ll see how that goes but I know drilling spelling just leads to tears and insecurities for her and then a total shut down which is fairly counter productive in the learning department. Harry will help…Harry always helps ;) 

Grace on the other hand….DAMN that kid is frustrating in this sense. She hates writing as much as Liam used to but in a different way. Liam would oblige with very mind numbing sentences such as: “I have a dog” “The dog is black” and so on to write what was required of him. But Grace just sits there…talking…looking around…talking some more…doodling…not writing. And then when you tell her to write she proceeds to tell you she doesn’t know what to write about for about 10 minutes straight. The kid has a brain that never stops, she is such a good speaker and is never short of content to share, whether is it welcome or not…she is basically a smaller, cuter, blonder version of me as a kid. I never stopped talking (eff you all those grown-ups out there who think I am still that way…you should have seen me as a kid…I have a tiny bit more self-awareness now but yes still talk a lot and you love it). Like never stopped. I had friends ask me to stop talking. I had teachers ask me to stop talking. It would hurt my feelings and give me pause but honestly I just kept talking. AND I hated creative writing. Really hated it…kind of like art class which I also dreaded. It took me a long time to realize that for me, creating anything requires me to totally let go of any kind of plan beyond a very high level idea or framework or better yet, just the vague urge (kinda like when you have to pee) and just start…so in school when creative writing was forced on us at a certain time, or on a certain topic or art class was practicing a certain technique I would totally freeze. Zero creative juice. No ideas. Blank brain. It still happens to me. Tell me to draw a picture of a barn and I can. Tell me to draw whatever I like and I will sit uncomfortably for a few minutes before I rebel and say this is stupid and I have other stuff to do. 

Childish? I know you are but what am I?!?!

Grace is me in this regard. Where I did excel was in answering written questions - especially questions that require and explanation of something rather than an imaginative response. This is probably why I loved science so much…lots of writing but technical writing that explains life’s processes…that was gold for me! So with Miss Grace I am going to give her questions to answer in her journal until we break through her creative writers block…let’s hope it doesn’t take her until she is in her late 30’s. 

This post is a good example…wasn’t really sure where I was going to end up. Just knew I wanted to vent about the GD journaling experience we had on Day 2. 

So. Much. Love. To. You.