I host a weekly writing group with my older girls and their friends. Ramona and her friends decided they wanted to have a writing group, too.
Two eight-year-olds and a six-year-old sit around once a week and read their stories to one another. How incredibly cute is that, if I do say so myself?
Here's Ramona's latest. I haven't corrected it at all -- she's currently skipping capitalization as she feverishly creates, and I'm letting it go. She likes workbooks, so when we do a workbook page, I show her correct capitalization, but when she's writing for fun, I just want her to keep the creative juices flowing. (And I'm lucky that she's a natural speller -- she usually just needs to see a word once or twice to remember it.)
The Big Bad Bear
it was a usual morning. i got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, washed my face and headed off to school. but, when i opened the door to go to school, something shocking happened. there i stood. face-to-face with a big, fat mama grizzly bear. i screamed and slammed the door.
i ran to my mama and told her what happened. she said not to scream, and she knows what to do. i said i wouldn’t scream if she told me what to do. and she told me to grab the jar of honey. bears love honey. everybody knows that. and so, i opened the jar of honey, poured it out into a bowl and threw it for the bear. once i had thrown it, the bear whipped her thick head to the direction i threw it. she walked over to it and then back into the woods. i asked mama how she knew what to do, and she told me the same thing happened to her when she was a little girl. and she asked her mama how she knew what to do. and said it happened to her when she was little. and all of my grandmas.
The End
4 comments:
Could you tell us a little bit more about your writing group? My daughter loves illustrating stories and storytelling and I'm wondering how a group like yours is run. Thank You.
FANTASTIC. I love the parallel mamas, and her own mama's wisdom, and the sense of energy and tension in the whole thing. And this: "the bear whipped her thick head"---LOVE IT.
Many cheers for Ramona!
Hahahah! And the Wisdom of the Mama Bear was passed unto the third and fourth generations, yea verily, for all of the Mamas had once been confronted with The Bear.
::giggle::
That girl is FICTION-MINDED, if I do say so.
Thanks, Tanita and Lissa! She was delighted with your comments.
Elizabeth, you can make a writing group as formal or informal as you like. Ours is very informal and lots of fun. The teen girls bring a new piece of writing every week and we sit down in the living room and they take turns reading their work out loud. After each reading, we offer comments, such as what we liked best, what we thought was especially effective, well-written, funny, sad, etc.
Later (usually while the girls are busy with lunch and laughter) I make any needed corrections on grammar, punctuation, etc., and offer a few additional comments or suggestions.
For the little girls (who meet at a friend's house while the older girls meet here), it's even simpler -- they just read their stories to each other and talk about them. :)
Hope this helps!
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