Writing to Spur the Imagination

My daughter loves to write.  I wanted to add more writing to her day, but I wanted it to be fun and imaginative writing.  My goal is to work up to an hour of writing a day.  Currently, I want to focus on letting her create her own stories before we add in a more official "writing" program.

Last year my girl filled up a composition notebook with her own "book," including chapters and illustrations.  It is super cute.  I thought about doing the same thing this year, but I didn't want her to feel like her special project was "schoolish."  I decided to make her writing time more light. 

I had received a copy of the Fun-School journal, "The Secret World of Talking Animals."   I saved it for this year, knowing it would be a great way to let my daughter's stories become part of our school day.  Every couple of days, I have her working in her Secret World journal.

My daughter does other writing.  She writes for grammar, does copywork and narration work for McGuffey, and has journal entries for her Beautiful Girlhood study.  In this way, she covers many different aspects of writing, all while reading quality stories and literature.  She tends to write a lot when she is delving into her own interests also.

Writing is one of the ways I learn.  I retain better when I write.  I sometimes don't know what I feel or think about something until I write about it.  It's like the process of writing helps to sort out my thoughts.  Writing can be powerful.  I want my daughter to receive the same benefit.

Since she has a natural love for writing, adding in a journal where she gets to make up stories about pictures she gets to color is fun.  I don't think she realized how much she is learning when she writes.  Mostly, I am trying to get her in the habit of writing creatively a couple times a week, building up to longer periods of writing as she gets older.

The Secret World of Talking Animals is perfect for her.  We have spent weeks living with the Borrowers, shared adventures with Aslan in Narnia, and even discovered an amazing secret on the Colorado prairie in Prairie Thief.  It is not unusual for us to imagine that animals can talk.  What would be unusual is to have read all this delicious literature over the years and not find a way to express the ways it grew our own imaginations.