Tell Me Again…

I also agree with Janell.  I appreciated all these thought-provoking comments as I am preparing for school next week.  

@my3boys:

“I am ever so thankful to the Lord for blessing CM. Her ability to understand children, and then give parents a way to fully educate their dc and honor them at the same time, is almost mind boggling.”

That is exactly my thoughts on this method and how I feel about it too!  =) 

OK, I don’t have lots of time this afternoon but I’ll give this a try.

About spelling/mechanics, Amanda–spelling is overwhelmingly a visual skill.  Correct punctuation is not–it is a skill based on understanding of sentence structure.  Seeing an incorrectly spelled word puts a “path” in the brain that says “This is what this word looks like” which conflicts with the proper picture of what the word looks like.  This is not the case with punctuation or grammatical skills–they are not visual.  You don’t learn how to punctuate by  memorizing what sentences look like. 

I don’t know for sure what you mean by proper mechanics early on.  Could you tell me?  Do you mean basic things like punctuation at the end of a sentence, capitalizing the first word, etc.?  If so, those things ARE taught.  Copywork!  If you mean things like the conventions for writing an essay–yes, you teach those, too, but there’s no reason to do it at age 8.  They don’t NEED it at age 8.  They will get plenty of practice later.  In fact, it won’t stick at age 8 since they won’t be using it!

When you do have a child begin writing written narrations—absolutely you begin to teach those things like grammar, (you should already be working on spelling) and sentence structure, organization, etc.  You don’t do it all at once.  I choose one or two things from each written narration and teach that and work on that until they get it, and then we move on to other things.  For example, every one of my kids has gone through a phase of starting every sentence with “and” or “but.”  So, we teach that one does not do this, we practice other sentence beginnings, and we do this until they quit doing it on their own.  Then I notice their subject-verb agreement is off.  So I teach this and correct it and we do it until it’s learned.  Then I see that they need to work on something else–so off we go.  You just don’t try to do EVERYTHING at once.  It’d be like one of us trying to correct all our human, mothering and other faults–ALL AT ONCE. Pretty depressing, huh?  Choose a thing or two to work on at a time. 

So see?  Not doing Shurely Grammar every year from K through 12 does NOT mean we let them write however they want and never teach or correct anything!  There is a LOT of middle ground and CM claims some of it.  I”m over here waving the flag.    I’m just saying that spending hours teaching essay form and gerunds to seven-year-olds is a waste of time.  (It is–BTDT!) In CM we teach things when the brain is ready, when the skill is needed, when it’s related to something else–it’s not that we don’t teach it!  It’s just a matter of striking while the iron is hot and not while it’s watching Spongebob.    (No, my kids don’t watch that but I don’t know any kid TV titles anymore–substitute whatever’s appropriate LOL).

If this is totally off-base and dis-jointed, just ignore it.  lol

If a child is telling you through his narrations of the events, what happened, and what he got out of it – in the order it happened – I think that is pretty much an essay of sorts.  Let them think it through and narrate it. When they are very good at it – to the point that they are not going to cringe if you have them write it and lose their desire because it is not up to your /the curriculum standards, then they start it as Bookworm says.  

Amanda, no one can really tell you when to start another formal program because we aren’t seeing what you can see in your children’s world.  I would think that it can start in 7-8 or even 9th grade as you are doing grammar. They seem to kind of go hand in hand (beyond your basic sentence structure and punctuation).  

But – if you are just now dropping the other program because everyone hates it, can you not just relax for a year or so before starting yet another round of mechanical writing?  I’m not sure how old your kiddos are, but if I remember right you have a little bit of time. As for a correcting something, what is wrong with casually mentioning that “commas go here, not there” or other little corrections on written narrations that aren’t so draining for any of you?  I can tell you that there is much benefit in this paticuliar correction method.  =)  By the time you have let them practise orgainizing their thought and saying them aloud, then writing them with casual practice of correction as mentioned, doing copywork of real thoughts and sentences, along with reading quality literature – a lot of your agonizing will have resolved itself naturally before you need another writing curriculum.  

I wanted to say that my daughters had, well, a “relaxed” language arts program designed by me…hum, even if we only read books and, sorta skipped all the narrations, dictation, grammar stuff. We liked copywork, though:).

not adding much to this conversation, but I wanted to share that…

I started the Well Trained Mind Language Arts recommendations at different points only to drop it and sit in the grass with a good book. (I decided not to go the WTM way with grammar).

This year we went from zero to sixty with our writing (13 & 14 yr olds). We are writing the formal essay, the persuasive kind too 🙂

and the girls just took off in their writing. I think that we are ready now for formal instuction.

this may help on the WHEN: Language Arts Scope and Sequence from Ambleside Online http://www.amblesideonline.org/LangArtsScopeSeq.shtml