P has been telling me for awhile now that he thinks he’d like to be an author/illustrator. He has a few career choices he tells me about randomly and this is one that has seemed to stick for awhile (along with my favorite…”a Jesus Tell Abouter”). When I taught Kindergarten I LOVED teaching writing to the kids. In fact, I actually taught writing to more than just my class because I loved it so much (I swapped classes another teacher so we could both teach what we loved…she loved math, I loved writing). With P I have taken more of an experience approach rather than direct instruction, but he seems to be pushing us ahead, which is fine with me.
Since teaching writing to beginning writers comes naturally for me, I don’t feel the need to have a formal curriculum, just the knowledge in my head of how to guide him forward. Today he went forward by leaps and bounds!
After lunch he went in the schoolroom to draw a picture while I was putting K down for a nap. I commented on the details of his picture and asked if he’s like to write a story to go with it. Usually his answer would be no, but lately he’s been so into this author/illustrator thing I was thinking he might say yes, and he did! Then he concocted this big plan about how he could start a library (book store actually, but he called it a library), and sell his books for $1. He even asked me to make a sign and hang it out on our front door to attract customers.
Now, we live on one of the busiest inner-city streets in our big city (we are missionaries here in case you’re a new reader), so MANY people are seeing this sign, which I think is quite funny.
I left the school room to leave him to his “job” and he completed his story on his own, only coming to me a few times for tiny bits of advice. Here is the finished story, entitled, “The Rainbow.”
I left the school room to leave him to his “job” and he completed his story on his own, only coming to me a few times for tiny bits of advice. Here is the finished story, entitled, “The Rainbow.”“Once upon a time, my family went to a rainbow cave and it was great. I really liked it. And my mom and my dad and Kirsten went. It had a big dark slide. We were scared but we liked it.”
After finishing this story it was time to get back to “planned” school, although he was itching to get back to his job as fast as possible. Little did he know that his “job” was actually better than any school I could have planned!!!
During our school time, Kirsten (a teenager who has lived with us for 2 years now, we’re her guardians) came home and became his first customer. And, she was even a character in his story so it was all just too perfect. 
To say he was EXCITED is a complete understatement! After his first sale, he couldn’t wait to get back to work to produce another book in case another customer came to the door!
To say he was EXCITED is a complete understatement! After his first sale, he couldn’t wait to get back to work to produce another book in case another customer came to the door! Finally he finished school, and went to work and wrote this lovely story…”The Penguin.”
“Penguin Pete travelled a long, long way. Pete got lost. And he got scared, but he never gave up. Then he got home and Pete was glad that he was home at last!”
Isn’t homeschool great?
Oh yea, and if you’d like to buy a story, let me know… ha ha!
Tell Pax- I LOVE his books! Wow! To be both the author and illustrator is quite a job! I have some children that say they’d like to be “Book-makers!”. It would be a fun job. Keep it up! I hope you sell lots of books. We need something good on the best sellers list!
SchoolinRHome
Tell Pax- I LOVE his books! Wow! To be both the author and illustrator is quite a job! I have some children that say they’d like to be “Book-makers!”. It would be a fun job. Keep it up! I hope you sell lots of books. We need something good on the best sellers list!
SchoolinRHome