... there is something about this corner of the couch that makes one sleepy.This week I have been working on story writing with Emily. Story writing has never been one of my strong points. I can write a thank you note, a business letter, a journal entry, a blog post, but fictional writing does not come easy to me. As a result I've kind of neglected that portion of Emily's second grade homeschool curriculum. Since it's mid-April I decided to get busy with it. This is the story that she wrote today:
Pie Fight
by Emily
by Emily
Once upon a time an old lady went to a new pie shop. A clown was there. Uh-oh! The clown threw a pie at her but she ducked. It hit a young girl insted. She had a pie. Uh-oh! She threw a pie at the clown. The clown didn’t duck. The pie hit the clown. They keped throwing pies. They made more pies. When they were at the last pie they said “maybe we should eat these pies.” So they ate the pies.
The End
We are going to expand upon it tomorrow. I think it has potential to be a really good story.
Hm... What if she wrote her own fairy tale? ie, she could come up with a character (a princess, for example), and the princess goes on adventures. She gets lost in a forest, gets kidnapped by a dragon (is it a mean dragon? nice? silly? what color is it?), or meets up with another princess, or whatever. To help with character-building, I can even send you a questionnaire that you can adapt for your purposes.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I hear, the kids come up with a lot of creative games and role-playing... it might help if you can explain that writing a story is just like that, but putting it on paper. A pet store game can turn into a story about a pet store. It might help that, after a creative game, to have her sit down and write what they did for their game (taking notes, remembering dialogue), and then to put it together as a narrative.
A questionnaire would be great. I wanted Emily to think other than fairy tales, because she's been making up those kinds of verbal stories her whole life. It's also a good idea to have her put their role playing into words. I should have her write a Chicken Nugget Queen story. Thanks for your suggestions. I think Emily actually has great potential as a story writer. She just doesn't like the actual handwriting part. It takes too long for her to get her thoughts onto paper. So I have her write the basic plot and I type it and we will continue to edit them with added details and correct grammar. I thought about you when I was teaching and thinking you should be teaching her. Maybe we'll have to set up some sort of online correspondence class when you're not so busy. That would be cool.
ReplyDeleteThat would be cool. I'll send the questionnaire over. I first thought of fairytales for her because I know those would come easy to her, and from there be able to branch out. Once I'm done with classes, I'll just be doing research, so I can structure my time how I want it, so maybe we'd be able to work something out.
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