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My eight-year-old has learned that if he wants me to write down his stories, he has to slow down for me. He’s had to learn to keep his idea in his head while he waits for me to get it down. That can be frustrating for him, I’m sure, but it’s a good skill to learn for when he takes on more and more of his own writing. It seems to help him if he’s able to move around while he dictates, to get out some of his energy, which would probably be harder to contain if he were sitting beside me and waiting. Another benefit is that while he’s waiting for me, he often rehearses what he’ll say next. Another good skill, as it makes his writing better.

I usually say the last few words of the sentence aloud as I’m writing them, so he knows when I’m ready for him to continue.

Having five small children presents a unique challenge, because most kids love to have their stories transcribed, and it would be nearly impossible to get to them all! But you don’t have to take dictation from each kid everyday (you’d never be able to do that with five) or even every week for it be beneficial. My son loves me to write down his stories so much, that we try to do it a few times a week, but often we don’t get to it. Still, there’s a cumulative effect, I think. Just the fact that we return to it regularly means my son is getting more and more out of our dictation sessions. I hope to write more about the specifics of that in the upcoming months.

Since you have several young kids, you might want to look into voice recognition software for your oldest child. This is something that I don’t have experience with yet, but I plan to explore it. “Dragon Naturally Speaking” is a software program that’s been recommended to me. It allows kids to speak into a microphone, while the computer makes the words into text on Microsoft Word. I still think it’s best if you can manage taking dictation sometimes, as kids can learn so much, for all the reasons listed above, and more. Especially, having you ask questions when something in their dictation confuses you teaches them an awful lot about revision and writing for an audience. But if your son is a natural storyteller, that means he’ll have a natural voice as a writer, which is such a good thing! You want to help him translate that to the page (or the screen), so voice recognition software might be a help, if you can’t transcribe for him as often as you’d like.

Sounds like she has the male species figured out.

Bird on Hunt

The bird was looking for worms and she couldn’t find worms so she started flying to the tree where she wanted to make her home.

She tried and tried. But she couldn’t find the right branch. And that was the branch she landed on.

But then she saw another same bird and it was a boy. And she was like, “I’m going to mate with him!” And then he was like, “Look at that lady over there, she is so beautiful. I’m going to marry her! Well, it will be so fun to get babies.”

Then the mother was trying to get sticks. And she went far away and got sticks and sticks and sticks to make her nest.

And then he flew over to her and he said, “What are you making?”

“Our nest, of course! Our babies are going to be laid. We need to make a few more nests and a few more sticks.”

She was called a red winged purple bird and I bet when the babies are hatched we could see one.

The End

So I paid attention, and when I offered to write down what he was telling me about “The Robber Duck,” here’s what I got:

The Rubber Duck

He steals rubber. And he’s fat. He sneaks in like real robbers into costume shops. He steals the rubber costumes. He carries them in a sack. And he wears a mask.
“But he’s very scary!”
“He’s a duck! Ducks aren’t scary!”
“But he’s a ROBBER duck, and all robbers are scary.”
“Oh, forget about it.”

He has a horn on his head, which he rams open doors with. He puts the rubber in a sack and at lunchtime he eats it and poops it into a pit.

The End

And then he was so excited about it that he copied it over in his writing into a little book he’s making. This from a child who has resisted all “let me write what you have to say, honey” blandishments from me.

Just the right action at the right time.