My boys abhore writing. I have to arm-wrestle them into answering lab sheet questions in complete sentences, coax one more word and then another short word out of them, and my mantra is, "Answer in a complete sentence, please". They are verbal enough but the act of writing, the physical labor of putting words on paper seems overwhelming. They even prefer doing long sums and multiplications in their heads, in order to avoid writing down the digits on a sheet of paper.
In today's curriculum, we had a section of introductory sentences in books - "hooks". We pulled six books out of the shelf, and read the first sentences. I also had some prepared.
"It was a dark and stormy night."
"Five minutes before she died, Grace Cahill changed her will."
I asked the kids whether they wanted to read the respective book, or not. "Tax day is April 15" did not get any votes. "Dark and scary night" was great, and they are reading the "39 Steps" right now.
Then I challenged them to write (gasp!) four first sentences that they thought would draw a reader in.
Alan wrote:
- They peered into the robot's heart.
- As they entered the maze, they heard a terrible roar.
- It all started on Sentai Mountain.
- As he activated the battle armor, the alarm was triggered.
David wrote:
- As they walked into the woods, they heard a creak.
- They walked into the village.
- They race began when she saw the sun.
- Before the bird died, it squawked.
Yes, well, you can see the inspiration. They are still pretty nifty, for kids who don't like to write. We also didn't have to argue about word count, and they voluntarily made some sentences longer to make them better. I was stunned.
Alan was so pleased with himself, he decided to write a story. For that, he needed a book. I do pretty much anything if it turns my kids into better (or more willing) writers. I went to my trusty friend, the Internet, and found how to make easy books on Angry Chicken. I had always swooned over her three girls filling book after book with drawings and writing, thinking I should be so lucky!
So we cut some pages, folded some origami paper, sewed through paper and ended up with not one, not two, but three books. Insipiration is inspiring, or some such.
(The papers are the few left-overs I had from an origami set that my sister-in-law gave me. I like that even books about robots and trains have flowery covers!)
Alan sat down and started writing (after I drew him some lines). His book is titled, "X-Force". He is, after all, a little boy.
David decided to do a nature journal, so we collected some leaves and flowers and are pressing them now for his book. Jacob, on the other hand, has swallowed this project line, hook and sinker. His book is almost entirely filled already. It's titled, "All about trains (and some rockets, too)".
He has about twenty different designs of trains in there - trains that come equipped with cranes, trains that have special wheels, trains that do special jobs ("baseball delivery!"), and some rockets complete with "USA" lettering. He must have worked for hours on it.
(Which, incidentally, leads us to the story of how we cured our little boy from violent temper tantrums, wildy age-inappropriate behavior, and very low frustration levels. But that's a story for another time.)
Love these books! And so easy to do! Thanks for sharing the idea and the links.
It was lovely to see your three boys make such very characteristically different uses of them...
I plan to make some of these with our kids at Playcentre (NZ parent run pre-school) - I'll be fascinated to see what they use them for.
Posted by: Belladonna | May 13, 2011 at 10:05 AM