Her Way

One of the great things about Stealth Kindergarten and homeschooling is that I can let Joy's interests lead the way. My plan yesterday was for us to begin writing about the Scottish wildcats, but that isn't what Joy was interested in. She wanted to write about the puffin adventure.

 In homeschooling Joy, I don't want to allow her to do whatever she wants, but even in a classroom, a good teacher would allow a child to write on the topic of his/her choice. I was certainly not going to stifle her interest, so we wrote about puffins instead.

The process of writing this piece (see left) took about 25 minutes. We used Microsoft Publisher. Sure, sometimes Joy writes by hand, but how do adults do most of their writing these days? How long has it been since you hand wrote a story or a piece for work? I want to prepare Joy for her future, not my past. She will be using computers to do many, many things. Besides, writing with technology is in the Common Core Standards (not till third grade, mind you, but I believe that is a mistake!). And...she loves to write on the computer.

So, I showed Joy how to add photos from our vacation (I changed a couple of the ones she choose, for privacy's sake) and helped her work through the spelling of the words she typed. She typed most of the first sentence. After that, she dictated and I typed. Her keyboarding skills are in the developing stage, and I wanted to her to add more details and thought. I printed off a copy for her and one for me.

Joy was delighted with her writing and shared it with her dad the minute he walked in the door. She read it without difficulty. I had her reread it during our "sit-down" school time this morning. She had to work on a few words, but overall, she read is easily. It will become one of her regular reading pieces for a while.

Just a bit ago, Joy asked me, "Can I use your computer to write about the slugs we found that one day?" Me (giggling just a little bit in my head): "Sure, Honey!"  (Let's sneak in some more learning!)