become a writing mentor to your child, part 6: finding meaningful writing for kids post image

Hello, Patricia! I really enjoy your blog. I have printed out various posts to keep in my homeschool library. My two kids are 12 and 9. When I suggested a writing group, they said they were not interested. When I suggested they try NaNoWriMo last November, they were not interested. I regularly ask my 12-year-old to [...]

the periodic table of marvel characters: thoughts on a long-term project post image

Mr. T finished his Periodic Tale of Marvel Characters. I think it’s rather glorious. You can view the project close-up in this scrollable view on my Flickr page. It was a challenge to get all of those characters into one shot. You may remember me writing about the project back in November, after T first [...]

yes!

yes! post image

The brave and lovely Heather Caliri interviewed me for her blog A Little Yes. If you don’t yet know Heather, you really ought to click on over to her blog and read about all the ways she adds yes to her vocabulary, even if it gets her doing little things like, say, moving her whole family [...]

become a writing mentor to your child, part 5: grammar, by ear post image

A few years ago I sat in a coffee shop, preparing for a homeschool conference workshop I’d be giving at the hotel next door, on writing with kids. There was a family a few tables over. They wore conference name tags so I knew they were homeschoolers. The two parents chatted while their son did a [...]

become a writing mentor to your child, part 3: three points from a mentor post image

Evidence of my own mentorship. Enough about teaching and standards and intiatives! Feel free to go raise muck in the intriguing comments of that last post if you’re still riled up; otherwise let’s move on to the fun stuff: mentoring. As much as I want to prance into the hows of mentoring, I think we need to [...]

become a writing mentor to your child, part 2: “they know stuff” post image

A random bit of Mr. T’s personal writing, discovered on the kitchen table. I’m going to start this post with a dubious act. In order to explore why mentoring might be preferable to teaching when it comes to writing, I’m going to share an article with which I fundamentally disagree. This Atlantic article came to me last [...]