Writing Course: Day Seven

   

Day Seven was very revealing. We corrected a few small issues from his paragraph work yesterday. We took a writing break to talk about our art study of week. This week's picture was Tiger by Kawanabe Kyosai, it reminded Z of our cat. 

Next we moved to our read-aloud, Stuart Little. I mentioned WHY I picked this book in an earlier post. This book is just fun to read! E. B. White is a master of the written work and the quality sentences roll off the page. Z and I laughed at Stuart's adventure on the sailboat. I was engaged, he was engaged, it was a beautiful moment. All over a book. If you haven't read Stuart Little aloud to your children, you should. Even if  you children are older. The chapters are short and it would be a fun exercise to dissect the literary qualities of the book. You don't necessarily see those things if you read the book on your own as a younger child. 

We worked on adjectives in Igniting Your Writing and rewrote the example, mad lib style. Not exactly the way the assignment was supposed to go, but it was more fun. 

Next I had slated for Z to read a chapter from a text I had downloaded. It was a chapter on earthquakes and  would be relevant to current events. We've studied a little about them in the past, but he's watched so many science programs I knew the information might be redundant. Part of my goal was to see if he COULD read well from the computer screen and he was going to outline the piece. Halfway through he balked. He expressed with great passion an extreme desire NOT to read more about earthquakes. Writing is communication. His oral communication was clear. My heart skipped a beat. What about the entire course of earth science we have planned for next year? I gulped. 

His statement turned into a one hour and thirty minute discussion. We started at earthquakes, moved to Pangaea, a quick discussion on religions, cultures, racism, conspiracy theories (again! he brought it up), economics, nuclear energy, alternate energy, infrastructure, politics. At the politics I stopped and brought out Plato (which I've only skimmed one section of in my own reading). I read the editor's note "Plato sought a cure for the ills of society not in politics but in philosophy, and arrived at his fundamental and lasting conviction that those ills would never cease until philosophers became rulers or rulers philosophers." I gave my hearty agreement to that statement. 

After a few more diversions I asked about science for next year. I do all my planning before May so if he's changing his mind,I needed to know NOW. He did. We looked up all the areas of science. Since we will do chem, bio, and physics in high school (and we've already done those) he opted for Computer Science. We're a techie family so I agreed, knowing Tigger would be thrilled. Writing is communication. If nothing else he learned how to communication a desire for something different. 

Z was different by the end of our discussion. I had fulfilled a love language, I had listened, I had made his words important, even if they weren't ones written on a page. Plus anytime you can use Stuart Little and Plato in the same day, it's a good day.