How do you start encoraging your kids to keep a commonplace book? We have done copywork, but it’s always been stuff of my choosing, not theirs. I would really like to see my oldest start writing down quotes that SHE finds inspiring. But she reads books so fast that I have trouble even getting her to write down all the titles (and I mean big, fat wordy books). She reads through them so fast that she often misses the little messages in them. She doesn’t notice the though provoking quotes or clever references the authors put into the story– she just loves the story. We are reading the Chronicals of Narnia now as a family and I’m trying to help guide her to notice the references to the bible stories. Any other hints on getting kids to look past the surface of the story? PS my oldest is going into 8th grade.
A good age for a commonplace book. Two thoughts – model it with your own journal, and add it to her schedule. Commonplace is on dd13’s schedule once a week, but now she’s always adding to it. One day she added a whole lot of quotes she’d just read bc she liked them so much. HTH, Christie
I added it to my older boys’ schedule. Right now it is daily, to establish a habit. I asked them to do 2 lines a day, they both decided to copy a (different) poem from The Hobbit. I’m thinking that next year I’ll have a ‘sharing’ time, where we can read something we’ve written in our books aloud, rather than putting it in the organizer as an assignment.
I added it to the daily school schedule, and once in a while I do catch my oldest writing in it on off days. I think adding it to the schedule gets them in the habit of it.
My daughter writes daily in her commonbook this year. I leave a prompt for her but she’s welcome to ignore it and write what she likes instead. She practices cursive and calligraphy in hers as well … through the things she writes.
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