wonderfarm

how does a child REALLY learn to write?

patricia — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:19:24 +0000

Mr. T is just beginning to type his writing on his own.

Warning: some of what follows may sound like heresy to traditional educators.

Recently a reader of this blog sent an email asking for advice. She’s a homeschooling mom, and she wrote after spending time with other homeschooling friends, and hearing how they teach writing to their kids. Basically, these parents have their kids work daily at their writing. Younger kids draft a sentence each day and then combine them into a paragraph at the end of the week. An older child writes a paragraph each day, and then combines them into a traditional “five-paragraph essay.”

My reader writes:

“I wonder if this approach is going to encourage a love of writing and an ability to establish an authentic writing voice of one’s own.”

She then went on to describe some of the writing that her kids do, based on their interests. I won’t describe the details, to protect my reader’s privacy, but she writes,

“Their writing experiences are few and far between, but in my opinion, so rich, so full of voice and purpose…”

Here’s what she wonders:

“Can these kinds of few and far between writing activities be “enough” if they are rich enough and gradually become more frequent? How can a family keep a sense of play and joy and authenticity in writing while making it a habit, too? And how can a parent know when it’s time to push a little more and when it’s time to wait? And am I being overly cavalier and irresponsible to think that teaching my kids paragraphing skills can wait a while?”

There are so many good questions here, enough to fill a chapter in a book. Rather than try to address this reader’s wonderings in an elegant, cohesive way–which would have me tapping at my computer here for days–let me offer instead some random thoughts.

The notion of learning through routine practice is mostly a school notion. Practicing small pieces of a larger skill day after day is a way of ensuring that a large group of children will eventually learn that same skill. The assumption is that the child will learn the multiplication table, or the rules of grammar, or the parts of the body if he or she works at them repeatedly. The teacher can’t be aware of learning that happens outside of the classroom, in daily life, so all learning gets focused into a lesson format. Many of us who grew up going to school have unwittingly become convinced that a person needs this sort of routine practice in order to learn something.
Adult-driven, routine practice-type learning rarely takes the child’s interest and motivation into account. In fact, in most cases, the child isn’t terribly engaged in this sort of practice. He or she does it simply because it is required.
On the other hand, when a child’s interest and motivation are there, that child can often pick up concepts and skills rather quickly. Repeated practice isn’t necessary. Your daughter figures out how to multiply mentally because she wants to win at Yahtzee; your son understands how different ancient civilizations affected one another because he enjoys reading The Cartoon History of the Universe.
This is not to say that repeated practice doesn’t have a role in learning. Repeated practice when taken on by choice can be the deepest sort of learning. When, for example, a child does that skateboard trick over and over to get it down; when she draws manga characters in the margin of every paper in her path; when she keeps strumming her guitar because she wants to be able to play Hey Jude through the finish. The child learns in these situations because he or she is motivated and the engagement is constant. In this case, practice leads to deep learning, yet it doesn’t feel like practice to the child. The child is simply doing what he or she is compelled to do.

So, how do these ideas apply to writing?

I don’t believe that a child needs to write daily, or even (gasp!) weekly to become a skilled writer. I’ve developed this radical notion by watching my own kids learn to write, and also by working with dozens of homeschoolers in writer’s workshops for over twelve years. Many of the kids I’ve worked with didn’t practice writing formally on a regular basis, yet most became effective, expressive writers by the time they reached their teens, and often well before.
When a child is interested and engaged in his or her writing, the experience is rich, as my reader notes above. It’s like a piece of good, dark chocolate: a little goes a long way. The child learns enough from the experience that it doesn’t need to be replicated on a daily or even weekly basis.
Learning to write in various formats (e.g. fiction, poetry, persuasive essay, narrative essay, and so on) matters less than allowing the child to write in formats that matter to him or her. Engagement is key. When a child finds topics and formats that appeal, the writing will begin to matter to the child. He’ll be compelled to work with the words, and will learn to manipulate them for his own purposes. This is what matters. Once a child has crafted with words and learned to control them, she’ll be able to apply these skills to other styles of writing–like formal essays–fairly easily. There’s no need to rush into these formats. (In other words, don’t worry if your child wants to write nothing but poetry for two years. That’s pretty much what Lulu did at eleven and twelve, and she eventually moved into other types of writing. Meanwhile, she learned what all poets know: every word matters.)
Allowing the child to focus on topics and genres of interest will naturally help that child develop the “authentic writing voice of one’s own” that my reader wonders about. This, I’d argue, is the most essential writing skill of all.
Writing skills are based in thinking and speaking skills. Believe it or not, kids can develop as writers without writing at all! If they live in a home where people talk, discuss and debate–especially on topics important to the kids–those kids will learn to express themselves clearly and passionately. And this verbal expression will carry over into written expression. Even kids who are not terribly verbal, but are quite logical, can naturally develop into strong writers if they understand that clear writing follows from logical thinking.

Understand, dear readers, that I came to these ideas slowly. I’ve been homeschooling for almost fifteen years, and have sent a kid off to college. I’ve been teaching myself to write for even longer. These experiences have gradually shifted my thoughts about writing. Still, I remember being the first-time parent of a young child. I had so many concerns about preparing H for what he would need later. Even though things seemed to be tootling along fine most days, it was often fear of the future that became the gravel in the road. I wrote a bit about those worries in this post.

If you’re concerned about helping your kids develop writing skills for their futures, I have a few quotes for you.

The first comes from writer, writing educator and college professor Thomas Newkirk:

“The good writers I see in college have often developed their skill in self-sponsored writing projects like journals or epic, book-length adventure stories they wrote on their own.”

The second comes from the syllabus for H’s freshman-year writing class at NYU:

“Throughout the year, your goal is to transcend the formulaic five-paragraph essay model—the one that you have probably relied on in other courses that required you to write essays—the essay that depends too greatly on a reductive thesis-statement and a limited scope of evidence.

The riskier, more fulfilling alternative is…a piece of expository writing that relies on inductive reasoning, that grows and develops as it attracts fresh evidence and makes surprising connections between such pieces of evidence, which explores an idea from many angles and through many lenses. The payoff should be a rich, provocative, unpredictable exploration…Only you—your ethos, your thought progression, your associations and preoccupations—can make your own essay. “

Do you see what I’m getting at? Both of these college professors value creativity and thinking in writing. Newkirk recognizes that a love of words and time spent with them is what teaches a student to write. H’s professor values deep thinking and personal insight. They’re less concerned that students know formal rules and formulas–H’s professor says the goal is to transcend those formulas! But, you ask, what if the students don’t know how to funnel their love of words and deep thinking into an essay? Well, that’s what these college courses are designed to teach.

Bottom line: kids don’t need to learn how to write formal essays at age ten. Especially if formulaic instruction is replacing meaningful, authentic writing.

So, how can you help kids develop into writers?

Raise them in a literature-rich, word-loving home. Visit the library often and check out armloads. Look for engaging nonfiction as well as fiction. Read aloud and listen to audiobooks together. Encourage independent audiobook-listening if your child can’t yet read, or doesn’t enjoy reading. Have deep discussions about books and films–not based on someone else’s “comprehension questions”, but on your own wonderings. Tell stories. Read and recite poetry. Engage in word play: rhyming games, puns and riddles, verbal poetry composed on the spot…
Talk about what interests them. Let them go on and on about ballet or Roman legionaries or Smurfs if that’s what excites them. Ask questions. Let them explain in intricate detail. Debate them, gently, on fine details if they enjoy defending their beliefs. This is how they’ll develop the skills of explanation and argument, which will eventually factor into their writing.
Make the distinction between getting-words-on-the-paper skills and written expression. In other words, remember that learning to form letters and spell words are not the same skills as developing a voice as a writer (the more important skill in the long run.) Help make the mechanics of writing as easy as possible for your child. Let those getting-words-on-the-paper skills develop slowly, ignoring public education’s timetable for those skills. In the meanwhile, explore dictation as a means of developing your child’s written expression.
Let them write about what interests them, and in genres that they enjoy. Even if what interests them is Magic, The Gathering or the characters from Glee. This is what they know. This is what excites them. They understand every detail, which will make the writing vivid. If they want to write fantasy stories because that’s what they read, they’ll understand how the genre works. And, of course, this is the most likely way to make the act of writing engaging, which will draw them in and make them want to continue. That will lead to those “self-sponsored writing projects” that Thomas Newkirk values. (After all, don’t you prefer writing on topics that interest you?)
Explore intriguing nonfiction. Rather than pushing dry reports and formulaic essay-writing, search for well-written nonfiction on your kids’ favorite topics. Unlike formula-bound essays, good nonfiction writing employs the tools of fiction; it engages us because it tells a story. (Consult that syllabus from H’s English professor.) Fun books like You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Roman Gladiator! teach both content and writing style. The writing and photos in Theodore Gray’s The Elements transform an overwhelming topic into a box of treasures to discover. Let these types of nonfiction serve as models for your kids. You can read more about helping kids find nonfiction topics based on their interests in this post. Excellent inspiration: Wacky We-search Reports by Barry Lane, which provides fun alternatives to dull report-writing. Bonus: it’s written directly to kids.
Help your kids find meaningful, authentic reasons to write. Writing because Mom or Dad thinks it’s a good idea is not a meaningful, authentic reason! Generally, we write to communicate with others. We write to connect. (Unless, of course, we find fulfillment in personal writing such as journaling. If you have a journal-loving kid, value that! See Newkirk, above.) We write, very often, because we’re seeking a response. Find real writing opportunities that engage your child and invite response: letters and e-mails; family newsletters or blogs on shared interests; signs and props for make-believe play; displays of favorite collections to share with friends and family; rules for self-designed games… Make opportunities for your kids: host a writer’s workshop; organize a science fair or a history fair; form clubs based on their interests: oceanography, insects, rock and roll music; help them gather a group of friends to write a baseball newsletter; form a team and create a homeschooling yearbook. (All examples of actual activities organized by my family’s homeschool support group!) If you don’t have enough local opportunities, use the Internet: find opportunities for your kids to write on websites of interest (all three of my kids have done this in various ways); set up group blogs or wikis; let your kids explore online forums if you think they’re ready for it; look for fan sites based on their passions; allow them to post reviews on music or books or films; check out the community for teen writers at figment.com. There’s much more to say here, and if there’s interest I can write further posts on the topic. But know this: kids who have real, meaningful reasons to write will want to write, and will continue to write.

Hoo-wee! Nothing like cramming an entire writing philosophy into a single blog post! I’m not even sure that I addressed all of my reader’s concerns, but it’s a start. Help me out, would you? Let me know what you think? Tell me if there’s anything here that you’d like me to explore in a future blog post, or if there’s any of my heresy with which you disagree. Maybe we can tease apart these writing notions a bit more slowly, so you don’t feel as if you’ve been whacked across the head. Let’s talk about how kids really learn to write.

year of writing

patricia — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:14:37 +0000

Me, squinting and looking sheepish.

I did not write much in 2011.

That realization sort of stuns me. I didn’t recognize it until the year began to dwindle and I glanced back. I spent a lot of time last year working behind the scenes of my writing, without actually writing. I futzed under the hood, you could say, without actually driving the car.

And how, you might ask, did I do that for a year?

I spent the first three or four months of the year researching why writing matters. This was, ostensibly, a means of starting a book chapter called (what else) “Why Writing Matters.” I can’t, I figure, expect parents to read a book about helping their kids with writing unless they’re convinced that the endeavor will be worth their while. So I simply set out to do a little research, and found myself falling into a rabbit hole of studies, reports, articles and books on how writing is becoming more important than ever in the modern world. And concurrently found other studies, reports, articles and books bemoaning the fact that writing is being more neglected than ever in most classrooms. It’s a fascinating, horrifying story, and I couldn’t move on from it; I just kept reading, gathering notes and pulling out my hair. I managed to collect it all into an article query, and wrote an introduction to the article, but haven’t yet had a magazine take me up on writing the actual piece. It’s an important story, and one I’d still like to tell.

I spent another few months preparing workshops which I presented at a homeschool conference and elsewhere. I’ve given workshops before, but these were two completely new ones, and it surprised me how much time they took to put together. Good news: those months of research wriggled their way into both workshops. Suddenly I had more evidence, more grit for parents, to work them up about writing. Giving the workshops was exciting–there’s nothing like sharing ideas with others and getting immediate, tangible responses. (And hugs, even.) The give-and-take with participants gave me all the more insight about kids, parents and writing for my book project.

Still, it wasn’t writing.

I spent another two months redesigning my blog. This was perhaps the most frivolous, not-related-to-writing distraction of all. I just wanted my blog to look more like the vision I had in my mind; I had no idea how much I had to learn about code and such to make that happen. It was a fulfilling little dalliance, though, and it had to be good for the synapses in my forty-six-year-old brain. Now I’m redesigning my homeschool support group’s website, so the experience wasn’t all shallow self-indulgence.

Looking back on how I spent 2o11, and how much I wrote, I realize that I worked on just three projects: that article query, my e-book for parents on facilitating writer’s workshops (still unfinished) and this blog. That’s it.

Sigh.

I also realized something else. There are two things getting in the way of my writing.

my book project
this blog

I know, I know! How can writing a book get in the way of writing? But a book project is nothing if not big. I knew that writing a book would take years. It’s been almost three years since I got the original audacious idea of writing it. In that time I’ve done a lot of thinking, outlining and note-taking. I’ve even done a lot of writing. But I can see now that I am years and years away from anything resembling a completed book. I just don’t have the time to make it happen faster. I’m still a homeschooling parent, which implies a certain level of busy.

I’m also a monogamous-project person. Ask any of the moms in my homeschooling group, who see me knitting at the park week after week. I work dutifully at one project and finish it before I even swatch for another one. It’s a little ridiculous. I knitted a single sweater coat for nine months until the thing reached my ankles. I’m not sure what this tendency says about me. That I value finished projects over process? That I can’t multi-task? That I’m tunnel-visioned? True. True. True. But it’s also true that if I want something I will work for it. Stubbornly. Single-mindedly. Mulishly.

I thought I wanted to write a book. I do want to write a book. But what I realize, now, is that I want even more to help other parents with their kids’ writing. And if I put all my time into writing a book that won’t make it into another parent’s hands for years and years, then I’m not going to be helping anyone for a mighty long time.

Then there’s the fact that my project single-mindedness hasn’t allowed me any other writing for almost three years. So many times an essay idea has whispered in my ear, and I’ve ignored it, knowing that I’d never get a book finished if I got sidetracked with other whims. But, oh, how I’ve missed writing essays and articles! I’ve missed breathing on them and shining them up until I could see my reflection in them. I’ve missed sharing them with my writer friends, and re-writing them, and re-writing them again, and finding potential markets for them, and sending them off, with held breath and crossed fingers. I’ve missed that enchanted period before the rejection arrives, when the unlikely is possible.

I haven’t written a new essay in almost three years. I stopped writing essays just about the time I started getting them published.

Suddenly I’m feeling a little sad about that.

I’m not giving up on my book project. I’ve just decided to let it become the afghan that I knit at on the side, for years, without worrying about when it will get finished.

In the meanwhile, I’m allowing myself to dally. I’ll keep working at my e-book on facilitating workshops. I’m excited about the e-book model: the shorter format, the self-publishing angle. I’ll try out this first idea, and if it goes well, I very well may release other portions of the book in my brain as e-books. I love the idea of potentially helping other parents sooner, rather than later.

And I’m going to get back to writing essays and articles. I’ve pulled a few simmering-too-long ideas right up to the front burners. Feels good.

But back to that other writing obstacle: this blog.

I’ve kept up this blog as doggedly as everything else I do. A post a week, most weeks. For a long time I kicked myself for not writing more. I was convinced that I needed to post more often to build up my audience. And how I wanted to build my audience! I kept waiting for the month that my blog would take off, and attract masses. But, no. There have been no take-offs or other statistical pyrotechnics. My blog audience has grown slowly and steadily over the months and years. What else did plodding, deliberate me expect? I have a relatively small yet loyal readership. Every month there are a few more of you. I am finally beginning to take satisfaction in the fineness of that gift.

But a post a week here has been too much for me. As this current post is making all too evident, I don’t write short. Wish I could, but I can’t. So even posting every eight to ten days meant that blogging took up a good chunk of my writing time.

No, I’m not giving up the farm. I’m just putting my eggs in the basket that says that most of my readers will keep showing up, even if I only post every two weeks or so. That’s what feed readers and email subscriptions are for, after all.

I’m also hoping to focus my posts here on writing with kids, and passion-driven learning because those are the topics that matter most to me. I’ve finally figured out that I’m not Soule Mama, you know? I may drop in some atwitter posts now and again–heavy on photos, light on text–because I don’t want to things to get too impersonal. But I have a better sense of what my mission is, and what I want to share here.

So. All of this has been a bloated, navel-gazing introduction to my new year’s resolution: In 2012 I will write.

Wish me luck.

hello, twenty twelve

patricia — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:54:29 +0000

Happy new year!

I have a post brewing in my brain, but we are off to the beach today, and I can’t get it together. Still, I wanted to get that Christmas tree off of the top of my blog. We de-Christmased the house yesterday; I wanted to do the same here. I leave you with a photo more in keeping with my current mindset.

I’ll be back soon with the typical blather you expect from me. (Reflections and resolutions, keep mingling in that brain!)

have yourself a merry little christmas

patricia — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:23:12 +0000

I’ve had half a post written for over a week now. But somehow, cookie-baking, wreath-making, sweater-knitting, gnocchi-shaping, veggie-pickling and Christmas movie-watching have kept that post from getting finished. I thought about simply posting photos of all those acts–a dispatch from Elf Land–but if you’ve seen one artsy, macro peppermint bark shot, you’ve seen enough.

Instead, I’m letting my half-finished post go, and including a photo I snapped with my phone, while dashing around Union Square in San Francisco, shopping. That’s what I have time for right now, and somehow it seems just right.

Merriest of merry Christmases to you, dear readers, and warmest winter wishes.

“don’t put this on your blog!”

patricia — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:10:51 +0000

Dearest H,

I know, I know, you told me not to put this on my blog. I understand that you’re nineteen and a college student and all, and being written about on your mom’s little blog could be pretty embarrassing.

But really, buddy, who’s gonna know? I don’t use your real name, so anyone googling you isn’t going to wind up here. And if any of your friends read this, you can ask them why the heck they’re reading your mom’s blog anyway.

How did you expect me not to write about this? I mean, you come home for Thanksgiving telling your dad and me about this big project that you needed help with. You knew we’d jump on it—we’ve been helping you with your projects since you first encountered play dough at two and didn’t know how to roll a snake. We’ve helped you make a trebuchet, a model of the Duomo, scale papier-mâché planets, a Lord of the Rings game terrain, endless costumes. To name just a few.

And we’ve always loved helping you on your films. Whether we’re scouting out the farm location you need, or making a costume for a boy-king, or hitting up friends to act, or doing nothing more than fetching burritos for your crew.

And this project was cool. You know how much I love The Royal Tenenbaums. I fell hard for that quirkfest when it first came out ten years ago, when you were just nine and still worked up over the first Harry Potter movie.

Ten years later you’re filming a scene from the movie for one of your film classes. Specifically the scene with Ritchie and Margot in the tent in the living room. And you needed a tent.

Not just any tent, but a tent that could be hung from the rigging (is that the right term?) That would be tiny and tent-sized at the back, but would widen gradually at the front, to accommodate three cameras. And that you could fold up and bring back to New York in a duffel bag. No problem, right?

Hey, if we could make a model of the Duomo out of foam core with no plans, surely we could make such a tent. So off to the fabric store we went, with your sketched plans. Twenty yards of purchased muslin later, and we were back in the family room, moving furniture, rolling fabric across the floor and trying to decide where to make cuts. I said I’d sew if you pinned. (I hate pinning.) You thought I was nuts for insisting on a French seam for the back of the tent, but that seam showed up in your film, didn’t it? Mothers know these things.

I loved watching you and your dad trying to figure how and where to hammer the eyelets. Felt like the old days, watching you build duct tape sabers together.

You went back to school, and we were all happy and hopeful that your contraption would work.

Still I wasn’t prepared for how much this texted photo would take my breath away:

It’s a blurry shot, taken with your phone in low light, but look at that thing! You can see the traditional tent lines at the back, but something about that splayed-open front strikes me as glorious. More impressive than I envisioned. Somehow a sea of muslin, some eyelets, rope and the right lighting came together into something grand.

That tent is some kind of metaphor to me. A metaphor for how people can come together and create something big with very little. Sort of like homeschooling: it’s really just a series of days made up of books and ideas and small projects, but somehow, over time, it becomes something more. It creates a mindset that says, I can make that winged tent that I’m imagining. I can dream something up, and I can make it real.

I’m being sappier than Wes Anderson, aren’t I? I’m sure this whole post seems a little ridiculous to you, but here’s why I wrote it (even after you asked me not to): Many of the people who read my blog are newer homeschoolers. And while they seem perfectly willing to come back week after week to read endless stories about your little brother–because he’s the only one who still lets me write about him–what really seems to inspire many of them are stories of what happens to homeschoolers when they grow up. (And dream up tents for films. And make them.)

Your dad and I loved helping you with your project. And now you’ve helped me with mine.

Thank you for indulging me, sweetie. I can’t wait to see your finished film.

Love, Mama

living history

patricia — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 01:32:39 +0000

This year Mr. T and I are delving into California history. With a few other families, we’re visiting a different historical site each month. We’ve already had a few wonderful experiences, which I’ve neglected to share here. One of these days I’ll catch up.

Meanwhile, this week we went on an overnight living history trip to Fort Ross, on the California coast.

It was an amazing adventure.

Fort Ross was established by Russia during the early 19^th century, as a site for growing food for Russian outposts in Alaska, and a place for hunting otter for the fur trade. The Russian-American Company that developed at Fort Ross was an interesting mix of Russians, native Alaskans and natives from California’s Kashaya Pomo and Coast Miwok tribes.

For the trip, each of us took on the persona of an actual person who once lived at Fort Ross.

Mr. T became Kirill Timofeevich Khlebnikov, an accountant for the Fort Ross Company who kept records of everything from how much employees were being paid to how often the cannons were unlawfully fired. T was part of the militia group on our trip, which meant he got to learn about weapons and help shoot a cannon. He’d be happy to tell you what an 1812 Charleville smoothbore flintlock muzzle-loading musket is. He learned how to follow Russian military commands, how to make rope and how to keep a fire going. He also washed a lot of dishes, something he never seems able to do at home.

I was Paraskov’ia Kulika, a half-native, half-Russian (or Creole) woman who married a Russian. After her husband died, Paraskov’ia worked off his debts by serving as a cowherd for the company. During the trip I served as a cook, which was a whole lot of work involving a whole lot of beets. (Borscht, anyone?)

The coastal site was stunning. The quality of light–an otherworldly mix of sun and fog—made the whole experience seem a little magical, as if we really had stepped into an earlier world.

Portraying real people, and visiting their cemetery especially, connected us to the people who once lived there in a way that we surely wouldn’t have felt by simply visiting as tourists. The whole experience was powerful.

When I talk to H and Lulu about their childhoods as homeschoolers, it seems like our living history experiences are some of their favorite memories. There’s something about leaving behind real life for a day or two, and living as someone else, that transports and transforms you.

It’s an unforgettable experience.

it’s just something you do

patricia — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:20:25 +0000

I went away for a writing retreat with friends this weekend.

For years we’ve gathered at the coast, but this time we found ourselves on the backroads of Northern California. Instead of looking out over beaches, we had buttes. And a most changing landscape–for a landscape that at first seemed unchanging.

We were astonished by snow.

We drank strong coffee and wrote words on the backs of tickets. Then we made poetry. (An activity that’s as fun to do with kids as it is with adults, inspired by Susan Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy.)

We watched a heron and a hawk face off from a distance of ten feet, and stare each other down for hours.

We ate well. These pumpkin steel-cut oats were delicious (and will be making a comeback in my kitchen on Thanksgiving morning) and Heidi Swanson’s surprising salad with kale, coconut and farro, from this cookbook, was worth pulling from the fridge, meal after meal.

We stayed warm with a wood stove.

We wrote postcards to each other, from fictional and somewhat emotionally-unstable characters.

We walked alongside fallow rice fields. Then we went back to the cabin and blasted I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got while making barley risotto.

And we wrote. Which is what we’d set out to do.

Getting away like this, once a year or so, matters more to me than I probably realize. It’s about being with friends and being without responsibilities, yes, but it’s also about feeding my artistic self, and keeping it going for the rest of the year, when the time allowed for it comes in fits and starts rather than days.

It’s important for parents to feed themselves this way, especially homeschooling parents.

If you can’t get away for a weekend, maybe you can do it for a few hours. For about fifteen years now, since Lulu was a baby, I’ve gone out to work on my writing in a cafe once a week. Usually Wednesdays. My evenings out have evolved into first eating at a somewhat dive-y Indian spot, where all I have to do is walk in and smile and they write down my order of chana masala and roti. I eat my dinner over an inspiring read (lately Adam Gopnik’s new The Table Comes First.) And then I walk a few doors down to a cafe and work at my writing.

Wednesdays have become a highlight of my week. No matter how busy life gets, I know I’ll have a few hours to indulge my writerly side, and it fuels me. Like that kindling in the wine barrel, in that photo up there.

Chris also takes a night out, generally to rehearse with his band. I’ve known him since (before!) he was a teenager blasting his ears out in a garage band, and I’m only too happy to help keep that part of him alive. (Seeing him play live always makes me feel like a teenager again, even without the thrift store spike heels and leggings.)

Our weekly evenings out have been, I think, one of the smartest things we’ve done as parents. Sometimes it’s hard: the one left at home does all the dinner-prep and parenting duties for the evening, even more of a task when the kids were younger. And I find myself saying no to other weeknight social opportunities because I don’t want to give up my writing night. Still, it’s worth every trouble. Chris and I are helping each other remain creative people, in the midst of a very full life.

What seems secondary, but must be just as important: we’re showing our kids that our creative selves matter. That a week isn’t a week if you don’t find time for writing or music-playing in between dragging out the garbage and doing the laundry. That indulging your creativity is just something you do, like brushing your teeth and exercising.

How do you feed your creative side, in the midst of a busy life?

(P.S. If you’re here via last weekend’s link at Simple Homeschool, welcome! Please consider jumping in and joining the conversation in the comments. That’s where the action is!)

DIY home page, DIY learning

patricia — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:41:39 +0000

So I have a new home page. Maybe you’ve seen it? You can check it out here, or by clicking about me in the menu above my header.

The home page is at patriciazaballos.com, where the blog used to live. The blog now gets moved next door to patriciazaballos.com/blog. I’ve been assured that the change shouldn’t effect my blog feed, meaning that if you subscribe via email or RSS feed, you should receive updates as usual. Hope so. Please let me know if it’s not working out for you. Resubscribing may be necessary.

Apparently I’ve become something of a code geek. Not that I know much, but I’ve definitely learned to speak a little PHP and CSS in the two months I’ve spent redesigning the blog, and setting up that home page. I thought that the home page would be fairly easy to put together, but it took even longer than the blog redesign, simply because I had to really tweak the blog template to make the page look as I wanted it to. Do you have any idea how complicated it was to set up those buttons linking to Twitter, Facebook and Flickr? I could tell you a whole story populated with image sprites and sprite generators and Firebug menu item numbers. But one sentence is boring enough–suffice to say that those cute little buttons took about three hours of my life.

Perhaps I’m a slow learner. Nevertheless, the whole endeavor brings us to the topic of do-it-yourself learning.

My home page isn’t just DIY in design; it’s DIY in content. Which has me thinking.

The page is, I suppose, an attempt at professionalizing what I’m doing these days. I used to be a credentialed professional, but my teaching credential is long lapsed and honestly, my teacher training has very little effect on my current life as a homeschooling parent. Less and less as time goes on.

Instead, I’ve been working towards my own goals, outside of institutions and without credentials to prove my accomplishments. Is it audacious of me to assert myself as a writer when I’ve only had a few pieces published? Does the fact that I was paid for some of those pieces make me a professional? If I’d spent two years earning an MFA in Creative Writing, would that earn me more respect than the twenty years I’ve spent studying writing on my own? Does it make a difference that I write in some fashion most days, that I think and read and look at the world through the lens of a writer?

I’ve also begun listing my speaking engagements on that page. I’ve been paid for some of those engagements, but not all. Does that make me a professional speaker? I’m likely hired, in part, due to my yellowing teaching credential, although what I speak about has little to do with my experiences as a credentialed teacher. Instead, I speak about what I’ve learned from my kids in our lives as homeschoolers, and my own research, and my own experiences as a writer. A quasi-professional writer.

It’s a home page mostly based on my own DIY learning, and that feels a little cheeky of me. But at the same time, what kind of a homeschooler would I be if I didn’t value DIY learning? Do I think my kids are lesser learners because they spent most of their childhoods learning outside institutions? Absolutely not! I think they’re learners in the truest sense of the word. Their DIY learning has had a profound effect on who they are as people, and it certainly hasn’t hindered them when they’ve chosen more traditional, institutional learning for themselves.

I believe in DIY learning for my kids, and I believe in it for myself. I can’t really confer on myself a credential or a degree, I suppose, but I can make myself a home page! I can announce to the world what I’ve been doing and where I’m headed.

And that’s what my little home page is all about.

on dreaming and duct tape

patricia — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 03:50:15 +0000

So, it’s November, and you’re certainly Halloweened out. You’ve probably moved on to pureeing pumpkins and writing novels. Still, in the name of DIY projects and for the love of duct tape, I wanted to share Mr. T’s Halloween costume.

(If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen this costume more times than you care to. I still haven’t figured out how my new phone is posting my photos to Twitter without me realizing it. Upstart phone!)

You may remember that in the spring, T and I fashioned some hoplite armor from duct tape for our homeschool group’s history fair. That was when I realized that you can pretty much make anything from duct tape. (Winter boots? Baby slings? Turkey platters?)

When T mentioned that he wanted to be Thor for Halloween–the Avengers’ Thor, mind you–we Googled up some images.

(Image from fanpop.)

Immediately the duct tape portion of my brain started humming. That helmet! That armor! We could make it!

We used the same technique that we used for the hoplite armor, taping over an old sweatshirt and its cut-off hood. More detailed explanation on that hoplite post.

For the helmet’s wings and for Mjölnir (that’s Thor’s hammer, if you need to brush up on your mythology), we headed over to The Foam Factory. (Who knew that such a place existed, not ten minutes from our house? And that they have a bin full of foam scraps for whatever crazy project you may dream up, available for less than you’d pay for a pack of Pokemon cards?)

If you keep adding layers of duct tape, and trimming them to size, you can build up practically any shape you imagine. Those big shoulder protrusions? No problem! (We ran out of time for making the arm bands and those wacky boot extension thingamajigs. But we could have fashioned them with duct tape too, easy.)

I went to three stores in search of fabric for the cape. Found nothing, even at the third, until I got to the remnant bin. Then I scored a huge piece of absolutely Thor-ish crimson fabric for $7.70. I already had the cape pattern at home, and the pieces fit along the selvedge with an eighth of an inch extra. Honestly. Meant to be.

About a week before Halloween, I found myself in one of those terrifying Halloween superstores. I actually came across a few pre-made Thor costumes, complete with ginormous plastic Mjölnirs, (one already busted at the handle.) But they were expensive and so, well, tacky. (I know, I know, what’s tackier than duct tape? Har, har.)

I could have pulled a piece of plastic from my wallet and been done with it. Yet there’s something so satisfying about getting an image in your mind and asking How could I make this? And when you bring your kid along for the ride, not only is the process fun, but the kid learns that no matter what you dream up, you might be able to make it real.

three days of reading and writing: an incomprehensive list

patricia — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:17:45 +0000

Oh, what a crazy time it is. Mr. T turns ten today, and Lulu turns sixteen on Halloween. Multiple cakes and celebrations are involved. Also, I’m trying to fabricate a Thor costume primarily from duct tape. But that’s the sticky stuff of another post.

I haven’t managed a post here in a few weeks. But after writing my last one, on making reading and writing enjoyable on a daily basis, I undertook a little experiment. For a few days I tried to note whenever I saw Mr. T involved in an act of reading or writing. There is no way I caught every occurrence; who knows how often the kid picks up an atlas when he ought to be putting on his pajamas, or labels a map before running out to the backyard?

THREE DAYS OF READING AND WRITING: AN INCOMPREHENSIVE LIST

Reading

Lots of independent random reading. A Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume 3. Assorted comics and graphic novels. The Story of the World, Volume 4. (T found this one on a shelf in our office and picked it up when he saw that it covered WWI and WWII, two eras in which he’s interested but we haven’t explored together. Cracks me up that he chose to immerse himself in what some would consider a textbook.) House Mouse, Senate Mouse by Peter J. Barnes. Scholastic Almanac 2011 and National Geographic Kids Almanac 2011. Interesting thing about T: he doesn’t tend to read many novels, although he loves comics and graphic novels. For a short while I worried about that, until I realized that for every novel he doesn’t read, he probably reads a dozen nonfiction books. He especially loves atlases and almanacs, and all manner of science and history books. At the library, I check out armloads of books that might intrigue him and leave them lying around the house. I strew them, as Sandra Dodd would say. I’d wager that a giant chunk of T’s knowledge has been gleaned from strewn books that he’s picked up and read.)

Family bedtime read-aloud: Wildwood by Colin Meloy. (Because Mr. T’s parents are Decemberists fans and we lived in Portland for a time.)

Daytime read-aloud: Adopted by Indians by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield. This is a bit of an aside, but I have to share: Mr. T and I are exploring California history this year, and going on monthly trips to historic sites with a few other families. We’re reading this book along with our study of local native people. So interesting! It’s the true story of a Texan boy who came to the Gold Rush with his family, and was taken in by a local tribe. Apparently Mayfield never told his story until just before he died, and a teacher-friend transcribed it for him. It’s fascinating to hear about San Francisco before it was even called San Francisco, and to hear what the Central Valley looked like when it was practically untouched.

Bedroom audiobook: The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien. This is the book of the month for T’s book group. T would never have the patience to read it at this point, so I checked out the audio version for him. Sixteen disks! Actually, T often “reads” his book club books via the audio version. Is this cheating? I don’t think so. Can T engage in a discussion on the book at his meeting? Yep. Seems like that’s the point.

Car audiobook: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly. T almost always chooses the audiobook we listen to in the car; I really wanted to hear this one so insisted on picking for a change. What a fantastic first-person narrative! Reminds me a lot of the young female narrator in the recent film version of True Grit. Calpurnia uses lots of wonderful, old-fashioned words that should never have become lost to us. Big surprise: T likes it, especially the admiration for Darwin and the natural world that Calpurnia and her grandfather share.

An information packet about Fort Ross, a local historic site and the location of an upcoming living history overnight that T and I will be attending. T’s taking a class with other kids who will be attending the trip. Reading the packet was an assignment for the class, yet T kept dragging his feet about getting it read. Instead of nagging him, I read the packet aloud. Suddenly he found the content fascinating and it prompted all sorts of discussion. And I reminded myself that reading aloud is sometimes what it takes.

Reading about Lego Ninjago online. To some parents, I suppose, this could seem like frivolous commercialism. The thing is, T isn’t reading because he’s lusting after the toys. (Although he wouldn’t mind a few of the small sets for his birthday.) No, what interests him is the Ninjago world and all its inhabitants and their interactions. (How do I know? I asked.) It may be online reading, commercially produced, but still, T is reading and absorbing and considering the information. Pretty much the same as he does when he reads an interesting book.

Practice questions for upcoming Geography Bee. My young geography freak is considering entering a local bee, so he and I took turns reading and answering questions from last year’s bee. And yes, he puts me to shame.

Discussion while reading The Elements by Theodore Gray. T loves this book, and picks it up regularly. This time, as he was reading, he piped up: “You know why I like this Elements book? It has really good writing. It’s complicated, but they simplify it so much that you can understand it. It feels like the writer is talking to you, like when he says, (reading aloud): If you find this section too technical, feel free to skim it–there isn’t going to be a quiz at the end.” A casual conversation about writing style in a scientific book, begun by a kid? Love it. (Another aside: Recently I asked a friend’s 13-year-old if there were any nonfiction books with writing she admired, and she also named The Elements. Good stuff.)

Writing

a variety of Google searches:

Many searches for images of Thor, as Halloween costume research. One led us to the very fun site of comic book artist Chris Giarrusso. Fantastic place to visit for comic-loving kids.
A search for the word used when meeting with a king, which neither of us could recall. (“Audience”).
A search for a map of “the ancient world”. T looked this one up independently, and it led him to a geography quiz site, which led to a good 45 minutes of reading and answering questions online. (See, that’s just one example of reading that I missed documenting above.)

Are Google searches writing? Most definitely, I would argue. In order to search successfully, you need to refine your goals and tinker with your terms. The ability to find information is crucial for kids in this digital world.

Continued work on his nonfiction piece on Lego Universe for our Writer’s Workshop. T is just beginning to type some of his writing on his own, and is very motivated to do it. Exciting.

The Workshop itself. Practically two hours of discussion about writing! Also a writing exercise: Think of something you like to do, and make a list of how to do a great job at it. T’s subject? Playing Lego Universe, of course. (Third aside: yes, yes, I’m still working on that e-book about how to facilitate writer’s workshops! Will get it up here in the next few months!)

A questionnaire for developing his Fort Ross character, required for the Fort Ross class. Not writing he wanted to do, and he did a minimal job. I had to encourage him to move beyond one and two-word responses. (What do you look like? Handsome!) Still, I didn’t push too hard; I think that would have only made him dislike the activity altogether. This goes to show the difference between assigned projects and self-chosen ones, like the Lego Universe writing mentioned above. I’d hate to think of how T’s writing might (or might not) be developing if he were in school and not given many opportunities to write on topics of choice.

Many lists of invented characters and maps of invented worlds. I find these scattered around our house like dust bunnies.

Writing and responding to friends in the text box while playing Lego Universe.

A thank you postcard to his grandparents.

* * *

Funny thing is, these were three very busy days, three days in which T and I had minimal time working together. Still, I’m amazed at how much reading and writing actually took place. I also notice that most of the examples here fall outside the scope of traditional reading and writing instruction. Reading comic books and Lego websites? It’s reading! Googling Thor and messaging while gaming? Writing! There were times in which I helped T out, scaffolding the learning for him: reading aloud when he didn’t want to read something, finding audiobooks when reading was challenging, not pushing too hard on a class assignment. Also, there were many small acts of reading and writing: casual conversations, Google searches. Sometimes I think we parents don’t notice these small moments, but a reading and writing education can be built on them.

Consider noting the reading and writing going on in your days. It can be surprising! I’d love to hear a few random examples of how reading and writing creeps into your lives. Your examples will help readers better understand the point of my last post: You can help your kids love reading and writing every single day.