One of the hardest parts of taking dictation from a kid can be getting started.

If you sit down at a table with a pencil and a piece of blank paper and say, “Tell me a story and I’ll write it down,” you might get lucky, and you might get a story.

Then again, you might find a kid standing beside you with his or her first case of writer’s block. Unwittingly inflicted by you. That’s not the effect you’re after.

From a kid’s perspective, it can be intimidating to have a parent sit down and suddenly say, in effect, “Okay, I’m ready. Entertain me.” That’s a tall order. For a kid not used to performing in this way, such a request can be anxiety-provoking. In which case you’re likely to get a response like, “I don’t want to.”

Then again, for some kids, having a parent sit down with a piece of blank paper and a request for a story is as good as being asked, “Do you want to lick the frosting beater?” My youngest, for example, is a born storyteller. The kid has not shut up since the day he learned to babble. He has told stories from the time he could string a few words together, to himself as he played, to anyone who would listen. For him, any offer to write down a story has been half an hour in heaven, from the time he was quite young, and he’s always been thrilled to comply. More often, he begs me to write down his stories. If you have a kid like this, get your pencil and paper and go to it. (I’ll have more suggestions for how you might want to go to it in my next post.)

For other kids, you may have to proceed with a bit more caution. Instead of broaching the subject as you sit at a table with a blank piece of paper before you, try bringing it up in a hypothetical conversation, when your child is in a good mood. Say something like, “You know, some kids like having their mom or dad write down their ideas.” You might make a few suggestions, such as those I describe below. For a lot of kids it’s important that you don’t limit the possibilities to stories: fiction isn’t every kid’s cup of cocoa. “If I were to write something down for you, do you have any ideas about what you’d like me to write?”

I received an email recently from a mom who explained that her eight-year-old had a tough time coming up with ideas when mom asked to take dictation from her. But recently she asked again and,

“…she immediately got excited about dictating letters to distant friends. Bingo. That will be a good start.”

Yes, bingo! Smart girl! Letters are a great idea for dictation: they’re real, authentic reasons for writing, and even better, they’re likely to be writing that gets a tangible response. We all know how much kids love to get letters in the mail.

(An aside: when my daughter was ten or eleven, she and a local friend came up with the idea of writing letters to each other in the character of girls from the nineteenth century. Both were fans of the Little House and American Girl books, and they had a fine time coming up with characters for themselves, complete with sprawling families of siblings that included, of course, twins. Lulu was a fairly fluent writer at the time, and she loved the opportunity to write in old-fashioned script, so I didn’t take dictation from her in this case. But I would have, if she wanted me to. And she was always thrilled to find a letter in the mailbox from “Abigail”. Something like this might be fun for other historical fiction-loving kids.)

What types of writing could you suggest to your child? My best advice here is to consider that very particular, quirky, individual child. What topics get your kid worked up, and talking fast? Life on Mars? Breeds of dogs? Baseball statistics? Classical ballets? Don’t discount the things you might rather not talk about: Pokemon characters, American Girl doll outfits, the Super Mario brothers, Webkinz (yes, typing that z makes me shudder.) Try to get over your disapproval and listen. The trick is to find what captivates your kid and start there. You might suggest writing down a list if your child likes to categorize. For kids who like animals or fantastical creatures, you might suggest they describe one. Some kids might like to tell an original story based on a famous character; others might feel more comfortable retelling a completely unoriginal tale. You might ask your kid to describe his or her quite-plausible scientific theory, or the one that seems fascinatingly ridiculous. Anything is fine. The main goal is to start with the kid’s interests and to get his or her thoughts on a page.

(As I’m typing this, Mr. T is rattling off all of the parts of Sponge Bob that are illogical, such as how it makes no sense that there are swimming pools when the whole story is already supposed to take place under water. Could he dictate a list of The Implausibilities of Sponge Bob? If it seems like a fun idea to him, why not?)

If your child seems leery of your initial mention of dictation, back off. Don’t mention it again anytime soon. Instead, after some time has passed, try this: When you find your child talking about one of those personal passions, if you possibly can, ask if you can write down what he or she is saying. Right then, right there. If the time isn’t right, wait, and try again the next time. Chances are, since you’re asking to transcribe something your child is excited about, and the talking is already under way, he or she may comply.

Some kids may still balk. If your child does, wait once again until he or she is talking about a personal interest, and then ask if you can record those thoughts for your own personal records. Explain that parents take photos to remember what their kids look like at different ages, and it’s fun to remember what they say as well. You may have read Cindy’s comment last week, in which she did just this:

“…I took dictation from them twice this summer and was fascinated by what came out of their mouths. I wrote their stories in my own journal, which did two important things. One, it got their attention (they KNOW the importance of my personal journal) and conveyed to them that something worthwhile was happening. Two, the stories are safe in my journal and won’t get lost in the shuffle of all the papers I save.”

This technique may work for more leery kids, I suspect, because it may help them stop worrying that mom or dad is trying to teach something, or make them do something schoolish. Having someone, on the other hand, take an interest in that thing you’re most excited about and write it down can feel very different. It can be quite satisfying. That’s what we’re after.

For the most reluctant kids, try to catch them in the act. Wait again until they’re talking about something that excites them. Then, without explaining what you’re doing, see if you can get some of those lines down on paper. After you’ve transcribed a few, explain, as described above, that parents often like to keep records of their kids’ thoughts at different ages. Read back what you have, and ask if you’ve transcribed it correctly. Many kids will be happy to correct and elaborate at this point. Yes, this technique is a bit sneaky–but sometimes being sneaky works.

The idea behind all of these methods is that once kids get a taste of offering dictation, they often realize that it’s easy and fun. And that’s what we’re going for, for all of those reasons mentioned in my last post.

Feedback time! What topics have your kids enjoyed dictating to you? It would be fantastic to have a list of possibilities for other parents to suggest to their kids. Please share! It would also be helpful to hear from parents who have had a difficult time getting started with dictation. Why do you think your child has been hesitant? Do you think any of the possibilities suggested above might help?

Thanks so much to those of you who have commented already. I was away for the long weekend, and without internet access. I have some catching up to do and will be responding. I love to hear from you.

Next post: what a dictation session might look like. (Also, I’m working on gathering photos to accompany all this wordiness…)

What is dictation?

Dictation, to me, is simply writing down something that your child wants to have written down. It could be a story, but it could just as easily be a theory about life on Mars, or a description of a fairy house just built, or the words of a ditty that you catch him singing as he eats his toast. It’s an easy practice, but there are ways to make it work smoothly, and I hope to discuss those here.

What’s the big deal about dictation?

This is what I hope to crack open and explore this month. I believe that taking dictation from kids is a powerful, but largely underused tool for helping kids develop their voices as writers. It isn’t widely used in schools, simply because that isn’t feasible, but I think it has great potential for homeschooling families. And it’s really for kids of all ages: from those just beginning to talk to older teenagers who might be struggling to express something in writing. It’s also a technique that kids who go to school can do with their parents at home.

Why are you doing this?

• Mostly because I think these ideas might be helpful to parents, and I want to share them.
• I’d love to have other families test these ideas out, so we can all get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t. I’d like to build a community of writing families here on the Wonder Farm.
• You may remember the William Zinnser quote I posted about a few weeks back, from Writing to Learn: ”I thought of how often as a writer I had made clear to myself some subject I had previously known nothing about by just putting once sentence after another–by reasoning my way in sequential steps to its meaning. I thought of how often the act of writing even the simplest document–a letter for instance–had clarified my half-formed ideas.” I’m hoping that lingering with this topic for a month, and responding to those of you who contribute will clarify my own ideas about dictation. Which will help me write that book on homeschooling and writing that I’m plugging away at.
• I’ve just left my oldest child at college for the first time, 3,000 miles away, and my middle child  has stopped homeschooling for the first time in her life, and started high school. As you might imagine, I could use a big project right now.

How do we start?

I recommend that at first you simply read along here, and ponder the ideas a bit. I don’t want to get you all fired up about dictation, and have you pounce on your child with your New Big Idea! Anyone who has homeschooled for any length of time has probably discovered this: the more excited you are about a notion, the more leery your child is likely to become. (Perhaps my kids have ultra-developed sensors to keep me at bay because I’m always buzzing with some crazy idea, but I think this is a fairly universal theorem.) One of the most important things to remember about taking dictation is that you want to do it because your child wants to–not because you think it’s a good idea.

But how will my child decide to dictate, when I’m the one reading here?

That, my friends, will be the topic of an upcoming post. I do hope you’ll come back!

How do I join in the project?

There are several ways you can participate. You can simply read along, and try out ideas that might work for your child. You can leave a comment–and I’d love it if you would–to tell how something worked, or didn’t work. You can ask questions of me, or of other readers, in the comment section as well. There will be opportunities to share writing which your child has dictated, if your child is agreeable. And if you write about dictation on your own blog, you can leave a link to your post in the comments, so readers can find you.

Please spread the word about The Dictation Project: on your own blog, with your friends, with your homeschooling communities. The more families we can get to join in, the richer the exploration of this topic will be.

Coming up tomorrow: thoughts on why taking dictation from kids can be such a powerful tool.

So what do you think? Any of you interested in joining along, if your child is willing?

This time it’s Lulu. She’s starting at the same school, as a freshman. (While her brother, meanwhile, has graduated, and is off to college.)

It wasn’t a sudden decision. Lulu decided to do this a year ago, and has been planning and readying since.

It’s hard to have your kid leave a life of homeschooling, and choose school. Mr T and I will miss having Lulu around: I’ll miss her conversation throughout the day, and her cooking; Mr T will surely miss the playmate that sneaks out of the teenage girl from time to time. And it’s hard to see her leave the homeschooling support group that we’ve been part of since she was two, and her dearest friends.

I know that some homeschoolers disapprove of school, and I get a flicker of that from a few friends in our support group. But here’s the thing: Remember my last post, about following the kid? That’s what I’ve been doing with all three of my kids from the beginning. (Although, in all honesty, I’ve gotten better at it over time, as the older two taught me how well it works.) And if you follow your kids, two things happen. First, you raise kids who know themselves and have a clear sense of how they learn best.

Second, you learn to trust their wisdom.

Both H and Lulu had clear and eloquent reasons for wanting to go to school. They’d spent a lifetime choosing how they wanted to learn, and choosing school was simply the choice that seemed right at a certain point. Both had to leave behind a very safe, tight circle of wonderful friends, to do something that none of their friends had chosen for themselves. Both times, their bravery and self-determination have amazed me.

Following them hasn’t taken a leap of faith on my part. They’ve been showing me for years how wise they are about knowing how they want to learn. They’ve been assured and confident and stubborn and sometimes loud and belligerent. And as challenging as that’s been at times, they have a pretty good record of demanding the options that have ultimately been right for them. They’ve convinced me.

Yesterday, on Lulu’s second day of school, she marched into the auditions for the school musical without knowing a soul and sang. I am so proud of her. And I have full faith that she’s made the right decision.

At this point the fellow chatter usually nods, but often I can see little question marks scroll over his or her eyes. You follow your kids? What does that mean, exactly?

This is the point in the conversation when I try to give examples. Just the other day, in fact, Mr. T had me chasing him down one of his never-ending trails. I thought I’d share it here, so the next time I talk to a new homeschooler and the question marks scroll, I’ll know just the specific story to tell.

Anyway, T was doing a logic puzzle in National Geographic Kids. (My kids have all loved the magazine when they were young, although I hate the ads and the movie and video game tie-ins. If you must know.) He asked for my help. It was a full-page, detailed drawing of a couple dozen kids eating ice cream in a parlor. There were several clues for finding a specific kid, such as the person is not wearing plaid. By process of elimination, you find the sought-after kid and solve the puzzle. I told Mr. T that this sort of puzzle is called a logic puzzle.

“I love logic puzzles! What’s someone who does logic for a job called?”

Here we go, folks. Did you catch that? He’s waiting there at the metaphorical trailhead, excited. Luckily I was listening, and not distracted by the tink of a new email or some enticing just-arrived sale catalogue, as I’m sure I am plenty often when T is ready to take off. But if you want to follow your kids, you have to be there for the start of the hike.

“I think they’re called logicians.” I said, and then–this is key–I tried to say the next line as casually as possible, “You know, you can make up logic puzzles. We could make them for each other.”

If I’d said that last line too enthusiastically, Mr. T might have shut down the whole trek right then and there. A bit of wisdom, learned from my kids: There’s nothing more dampening to a new idea than to have your mother jump in and run off with it.

Now, as we had this conversation, I was putting dinner on the table, so we didn’t have time to pursue the idea further right then. But since he’d seemed so interested, the next morning I brought it up again. I told him that I remembered some logic activities in a book–Family Math–in which kids write “bean recipes”, using real beans to work out problems that are solvable.

“Beans! Why would I want to do logic problems with beans?”

I was about to tell him that we could just use the book for ideas, when he busted out with this: ”We could use my guys!”

His guys. Some of you may remember Mr. T’s guys from a post long back called When Your Kid Wants Almost Nothing For Christmas. His guys are a motley collection of small plastic creatures. Many are Digimon figures, although T knows little about Digimon. Some are Gormiti figures, which we discovered in Europe, and seem to be an Italian version of Pokemon. T doesn’t care much for the backstory of these creatures; he invents his own names and his own stories. And he adores his guys: they’re one of the few toys he plays with, almost every day.

If a project revolves around his guys, I know Mr. T will be interested. So when he says something like, “We could use my guys!”, I pay attention.

We decided to each take a bunch of guys, and to secretly select a target guy to write clues about. We would each read each other’s clues, and try to find the secret creature.

Mr. T’s first set of rules was a bit vague.

His first clue was If it’s holding something. I asked whether a guy was holding something meant that it was the mystery creature, or wasn’t. T had meant that if it were holding something, it could be the creature. I asked how he could write the clues so they’d be easier to understand. He remembered how they were written in National Geographic Kids. “I’ll write them like that next time.” (Who knew that these logic puzzles would be a little lesson in writing clearly? Most excellent.)

Then he tried out my clues.

We had fun solving each other’s puzzles, so we each wrote another set of clues. “Let’s use more guys this time!” T enthused. Okay!

Note that his clues are more straightforward this time. He was especially excited about this clue: It does not have wings on it. He stumped me with that one. One of his guys–a wingless one–had a tiny bird emblem on his chest. With wings.

I was also charmed by this clue: It does not have any fire, or lightning, on it. Don’t you love the commas? You could argue that they aren’t necessary, but he’s playing with comma usage, and that excites me–language geek that I am.

We had a fine time writing clues for each other, and solving them. Much more fun than if I’d been suckered into playing Monopoly, and a thousand times more fun than him doing a math workbook page. Mr. T got some logic practice, some writing practice, some playing-with-guys time, and some playing-with-Mama time. And he was entirely engaged. All because I followed his lead.

That’s the kind of learning I love.

Have your kids led you down any trails lately?

Can you tell me about your family and audiobook listening?

I’m starting a chapter on audiobooks for my book. (My book! Remember that old notion? Remember the chapter-a-month challenge? Golly gee whiz, I have some catching up to do.)

Listening to audiobooks together has probably been one of the most consistent activities we’ve done in our family’s thirteen years of homeschooling–a close second only to my reading aloud. From the time H was about five, we’ve almost always had an audiobook running in the car. We’ve listened to everything from Ramona the Pest to Odysseus. Nowadays H isn’t in the car with us very often, and the book is usually one that T and I have chosen together–but Lulu often surreptitiously switches off her iPod and listens along.

Both older kids also spent years listening to audiobooks in their rooms. Lulu especially. She’s an auditory learner and didn’t love reading until she was about eight. But she loved her audiobooks. And she listened to them again. And again. And again. And–it must be said–again. Mr. T has been doing the same for the last three years or so. I can’t believe that our Harry Potter discs haven’t worn down to wafers by now.

In my notebook, I’m jotting down notes about why I think we love audiobooks so much. Here are a few random thoughts.

• Audiobooks make me feel less guilty about all the driving we do. All the activity-schlepping and errand-running is instantly transformed into a literature appreciation session.
• Professional readers even make the classics captivating. Have you ever heard Tim Curry read A Christmas Carol? And Patrick Fraley’s rendition of Huckleberry Finn is a revelation. (I’ve decided that no kid should be expected to read Huckleberry Finn and all its confounding dialect, when the spoken version is such a joy.)
• On days when I’m feeling sick or lazy, or one of the kids is feeling sick or lazy, we can curl up on the couch and have someone read to us. Someone who reads really well. (And if Mama isn’t feeling too sick or lazy, she might even be able to knit.)
• Audiobooks allow kids who might not be reading yet–or may not enjoy reading–to lap up literature.
• Likewise, audiobooks allow kids to enjoy books that might be more advanced than their reading abilities.
• Listening to books–and re-listening to them!–helps kids internalize the flow and rhythm of good writing.
• Some books I just don’t want to read aloud. All those thick-as-a-dictionary Harry Potters? You may call it sacrilege, but I just couldn’t do it. And why would I want to, when Jim Dale and his universe of wondrous voices does it so much better?
• If you’re into silly phrases like vocabulary-builder, audiobooks are it. I’ll never forget the morning when seven-year-old Lulu accused her older brother of having “a severe lack of moral stamina.” (Thanks, Lemony Snicket!) I’m also pretty sure that audiobooks had something to do with H’s high SAT reading scores. Not that we listened because I cared a dang about SAT scores back then, but it’s a useful fringe benefit.
• And perhaps most dear to my heart: when we listen in the car together, our drives often become impromptu literature analysis sessions. Casual book clubs, if you will. This isn’t something I instigate, mind you, but something that just happens. Someone will say something like I think J.K. Rowling makes the beginning drag on for too long or Why is it so funny when a bad guy like Count Olaf says a word like yep? And suddenly we’re all throwing in our opinions and dissecting just what makes writing good. It’s a beautiful thing. And do I see the results of these conversations come into play in my kids’ own writing? Um, yep.

I am still a great fan of reading aloud, and would never let audiobooks replace reading to my kids. But there’s something discretely captivating about a good audiobook. Maybe it’s the professional reader. Maybe it’s the fact that we manage to get through audiobooks faster than our read-alouds–and momentum can be an important factor in enjoying a book. Maybe it’s because it takes no extra energy from me to stay in the car a little longer when we get to a really good part. I don’t know. But I do know that listening to audiobooks has played a large role in my kids’ development as writers. And I want to include a chapter about that.

So tell me: Does your family listen to audiobooks? How? When? Where? Could you share some favorites?

Please feel welcome to respond to any or all of the above, or whatever else crosses your mind. Thank you. Your feedback means even more to me than a pan of homemade vegetarian lasagna.

Thanks for indulging me. These posts keep me sticking to my goals.

They learn from us. We learn from them.

You may remember that my plan is to use the first three chapters to write about what each of my three kids have taught me about writing. I’ve shifted my ideas with each kid, and these reflections form a sort of nutshell history of how I went from a classroom model of teaching writing to something completely different.

The big lesson I learned from Lulu was the importance of helping a child develop a voice as a writer.

When I first began taking writing classes as an adult, I was always baffled when instructors used the term voice. How could an auditory term have anything to do with the written word? Clearly it was an important term: not only did all of my instructors use it; every one of my writing books had a chapter on voice (or sometimes one on style, which seemed essentially the same thing.)

Definitions of voice differ, depending on which writer you’re reading, but I came to understand voice as having personality and style on the page (or screen). In What A Writer Needs, a book for writing teachers, Ralph Fletcher offers this helpful definition: “When I talk about voice, I mean written words that carry with them the sense that someone has actually written them. Not a committee, not a computer: a single human being. Writing with voice has the same quirky cadence that makes human speech so impossible to resist listening to.”

I rarely took dictation from H, except when he was very young–before age six or so. With Lulu I began to do it more regularly, but I always felt a little guilty about it. I felt like she probably ought to be writing herself. But when she was eight, she dictated a story that started to set me straight on all that.

This time L. took a character from literature, Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby, and dictated her own, original chapter in Cleary’s style.  At the time L. had been reading the Ramona series–the first series of longer chapter books which she’d slurped down on her own–and listening to audiobook versions of the stories in her room.  L. gave Ramona her own grandmother’s real-life experience of putting hand dishwashing liquid into the dishwasher, only to have it foam out in billows all over the kitchen floor.

Here’s how L.’s story, titled Oh Ramona, begins:

Ramona Quimby walked in through the back door.

“How was kindergarten?” her mother asked, in a tired voice.

“It was fine, except I gave Davy one of my worm rings and he said, ‘Yuck!’ and threw it back at me.”

“Oh Ramona,” Mrs. Quimby said.

“Will you read me a story, Mama?”

“Oh Ramona, I’ve got a headache and look at all those dishes I’ve got to put in the dishwasher.” She groaned as she pointed towards the sink full of dishes. “I’m going to lie down in the bedroom. You go play and stay out of mischief!”

Mrs. Quimby walked into the bedroom. Ramona looked from the kitchen to the bedroom and back to the kitchen.

“I can help Mama by putting all the dishes in the dishwasher and running it!” Ramona tiptoed into the kitchen, and as quietly as she could, began to load the dishwasher with the dishes. Ramona knew that her mother used soap in the dishwasher, so she climbed up and got the bottle of soap down from the counter. Ramona filled the dishwasher tray with soap. “Maybe I should put some more in, ’cause these dishes are really dirty.”

Of course, soon bubbles are oozing across the kitchen floor, and instantly Ramona is putting on rain gear to scoop up “bubble snow”, placing foam “whipped cream” on plates for a bubble feast, and having a “foam war” with her buddy, Howie. I was astounded as L. dictated this passage to me over the course of a few days, and I said so, something along the lines of, “You sound just like Beverly Cleary!” Which she did. Cleary’s style is all there: the weariness in Mrs. Quimby’s “Oh Ramona”; the worm ring detail; the way Ramona talks to herself; and, of course, her boundless, imaginative mischief.

I knew from my writing books that professional writers often start out by mimicking their heroes.  Annie Dillard’s words bear Thoreau’s whispers; Michael Cunningham let Virginia Woolf’s ghost guide his pen. Michael Chabon writes about how, as a boy, he modeled his comic book club newsletter on the editorial pages of Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee. “I wrote it in breathless homage, rich in exclamation points, to Lee’s prose style, that intoxicating smartass amalgam of Oscar Levant, Walter Winchell, Mad magazine and thirty-year-old U.S. Army slang.” This, often, is how writers learn their craft. L. was learning by imitating her own master–and she was able to do so because I took the time to take dictation from her. I’m certain that she couldn’t have adopted the nuances of Cleary’s style if she’d had to do the writing herself. She was still struggling with basic spelling at that that point; content took a backseat to form when she wrote on her own.

The Ramona story in particular was enough to convince me to continue taking dictation from L. as long as she wanted it. I was an aspiring writer myself, still striving to find my own voice as an essayist. I knew how hard it could be to write in a consistent style–to balance humor and insight, story and analysis. I knew how hard it was to be captivating on a page. Even back then, I sensed that helping L. develop her own voice mattered far more than worrying over whether she knew how to start sentences with capitals, or punctuate contractions, or spell sufficiently for her age.

Kids. They wear me out sometimes, ’til I’m ready to collapse on my bed like Mrs. Quimby. But I learn from them every day. Every day.

Next month: what I learned about writing from Mr. T, the kid who never does anything the way you’re supposed to.

I didn’t really think much about it last summer, when I thumb-tacked that map of the world above Mr. T’s bed. He’d been interested in maps lately, and this one was colorful, with cute pictures of animals. I thought he’d like it.

I had no idea that such a small act would eventually prove my fathomless ignorance.

At first he was simply fascinated by certain places on the map. Mongolia. Sri Lanka. Greenland.

But soon he began to talk about places I’d never heard of.

Him: “Did you know that Norway is one of the highest countries in the world? Because of Spitsbergen.”

Spitsbergen?

Turns out it’s a Norwegian island in the Arctic Circle.

And, “Can you find Myanmar on the globe?”

Myanmar? I’ve never heard of Myanmar.

“It’s Burma, Mama.”

Oh.

We didn’t realize how much he’d been studying the map until one afternoon when Mr. T was spinning our globe at the kitchen table. Chris started naming countries for him to find.

“Argentina.”

“D-a-d-d-y! That’s too easy!”

“Laos.” He found it.

“Tajikistan.” Got it.

“Oman.” No problem.

I think Chris finally stumped him with Eritrea.

I’m just glad he hadn’t asked me to play. Although I could have found Argentina.

Another day my parents were over for dinner, and my dad started telling about a radio story he’d heard about Bangladesh. The story, he said, claimed that Bangladesh’s population was almost 160 million–in an area the size of Iowa.

Chris, a numbers guy, thought that sounded funny. “That can’t be right. That’s half the population of the United States.”

“It is right,” piped up Mr. T, and he ran out of the kitchen. Soon he was back, with a notebook and a pencil in his hand. He’d written out the number 133376684. “This how many people are in Bangladesh. It says so on my map.”

Which proves, you realize, that the kid has lain in bed looking at his map and contemplating the population of Bangladesh. (His map, with data from 2002, is already a bit outdated.)

I showed him some online geography games here. He played the alien game, in which the names of countries flash on the screen, and you click on the appropriate country on a very small map, so the alien knows where to go. T knew the locations of Greece, Saudi Arabia, Chad.  Click, click, click. Lulu and I watched behind him, and when he clicked on Chad, we looked at each other sheepishly, knowing that if we played, our aliens would be lost and teleporting back home in no time.

He never asked to go back to that geography site again. Too easy.

He loves to play Scrambled States of America–but I’ve learned that my typical game-playing tact of “going easy on him” is not in my best interest here.  He knows where all the states are, and he knows the capitals (sheesh!) My chances are better with Passport to Culture because the game includes questions about culture, instead of just geography. And I beat him at Take Off! the other day–only because we were playing the basic version, in which luck factors more than geographical knowledge. If we played “The Challenge Game”, I’d be a goner.

The corner of Mr. T’s map are bedraggled because he lies on his bed looking at it, while walking his feet up the wall. The map is constantly loosening from its tacks, and left dangling from one corner. I told T I’d like to find another copy of it, and have it mounted so it would be sturdier.

“No! I like this one!”

Clearly he does. But some day, if he tires of it, I’ll put some thought into what goes in its place, knowing what may follow. A Table of the Elements might be a good choice for the spot. Or a diagram of the complete animal kingdom. Or how about an elaborate timeline of the world, from pre-history to modern times?

Yeah, that would be good.

I understand the concern. I’ve had the same worry myself.

But remember this: if you’re taking dictation from kids, you’re helping them see the value of expressing themselves in writing. The usefulness of having a written record of their thoughts.

And eventually, they’ll start writing on their own.

It will probably start small.

A title to a drawing, maybe. Or a caption.

(This one cracks me up. It’s the last page of a battle comic. Note that everyone is head-stabbingly, eye-crossingly dead. I was wondering why he wanted to know how to spell Mondays…)

They may give names to characters drawn.

Or keep a list of favorite Pokemon cards.

Next thing you know, they’re jotting down statistics as they play video games. (Cue up my waldorf guilt.)

I didn’t ask Mr. T to do any of this writing. Usually, I didn’t even know he was doing it. I just found it lying around.

It took me a long time to believe this, but now I do: if you don’t bug kids about writing, if you don’t force them to do it, if you value writing in your home, if you’re willing to write for them occasionally…they will come to writing on their own. At their own time, in their own way. H. liked to make elaborate Calvin-esque Keep Out signs for his bedroom door. Lulu liked to keep lists of her Beanie Babies, and to write out fancy daily schedules for her school days at Hogwarts. And that eventually led to other, more advanced writing. 

So don’t discount those Pokemon lists, or the Beanie Baby cataloguing. And don’t feel like you have to assign writing topics or penmanship practice pages. Barring underlying issues like dyslexia (which I promised my friend Susan I would acknowledge), kids can learn to write as organically as they learned to talk. They really can.

She decided to research each decade since 1910 to learn how food had changed in that decade. The book The Century In Food by Beverly Bundy was a big help, as was the internet.

For each decade she wrote an overview; then she came up with a menu, a few typical school lunches, a recipe and an interesting tidbit from the decade. 

A big part of the fun was deciding how to display her information. There are always lots of tri-fold display boards at these fairs, and Lulu wanted to come up with something more engaging. She decided to put each decade’s information on some sort of food container that seemed emblematic of the decade. 

She put the 1960s on an old Julia Child cookbook.

And don’t you love the 80s presented on a Big Gulp container, and the 90s on a package of Lunchables? (Or maybe I should say: doesn’t it make you cringe?)

She also made samples for visitors to try: a butterless, eggless, milkless cake from the wartime 1940s (surprisingly good!) and a pineapple upside-down cake from the 1950s. And she ran a loop of those wacky old commercials.

It surprised me how hard Lulu worked at this project. She had a vision for it and wouldn’t stop until it was finished. I think the history fair might have been a little disappointing for her–after all the work she did, it seemed that most visitors weren’t able to spend time to really explore her display. Then again, the main reward seemed to be the accomplishment she felt.  If you go back to my last post and reconsider those Dan Pink abilities for the future, I’d say Lulu spent a few months romping in design (how she displayed the information), story (deciding how to tell each decade’s story in a compelling way), symphony (pulling together information from many places and creating something unique) and meaning (this topic mattered to Lulu, which was evident in the amount of time she put into it. Something about it really drove her.)

My favorite part of her display was her write-up of the decade of 2000-2010. Most of the resources she’d used didn’t include this decade, but that didn’t really matter–this was the one decade Lulu remembered herself. We talked about the decade a bit before she wrote, but most of her information came from discussions we’ve had over the last ten years. Lulu gets what’s happening with food in our country these days, and I’m proud of that. I’m not sure that goal would show up on a list of education standards, but it’s pretty important to us.

Here’s what she wrote.

     “In the 2000s, the organic and Slow Food movements started to become popular. These movements brought America back towards where it had started at the beginning of the 1900s, buying fresh vegetables at local markets, cooking meals from scratch and using seasonal ingredients. Over the last century Americans had strayed farther and farther from this sort of cooking, until home-cooking meant heating something up or adding water. With the Slow Food movement, Americans began to cook natural, real health food, not the low-fat, calorie-free food that had been thought of as “healthy” in the past. Farmer’s markets, farm boxes of fruits and veggies and health food stores like Whole Foods are spreading across the country, bringing with them the idea that not only is Slow Food healthy, but it’s also delicious and enjoyable to make. Foods like organic eggs and milk, free-range chickens, grass-fed beef and local vegetables are beginning to appear on ordinary supermarket shelves and become staples in American diets. Restaurants are also following the movement, creating organic and seasonal menus that appeal to the next generation as well as the last one. Even First Lady Michelle Obama has chosen as her cause, while in the White House, to improve the eating habits of American children and bring healthy foods back to schools.

     Even with these movements, America is still very much a country built on convenience foods, but that is beginning to change. And maybe one day in the near future, America will have come full circle, back to the wholesome, homemade foods of the 1910s.”

Hopeful, don’t you think?

I think she learned a lot.

Because I think you should read this book.

mr. t tries on a whole new mind

It’s a book about how we’re leaving an era widely known as the Information Age, and entering a new one. Pink writes, “We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear, computerlike capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and society built on the inventive, empathetic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age.” And this book is all about the skills we’ll need in this new age.

The premise here is that many of the jobs held in the Information Age are now carried out by computers, or outsourced to foreign labor. So the jobs of the future will require skills that are more right-brained than left-brained, skills that Pink calls “high concept” and “high touch”.

And while the book’s primary audience is the business world, I think New Mind has big implications for parents, and for homeschooling parents in particular. (An aside: I know that many of my readers aren’t homeschoolers. Still, the fact that you follow this blog, and based on the comments many of you have left, I assume that we have some intersecting philosophies about parenting. I imagine that you value learning that’s meaningful to your child. So while I refer to homeschoolers in the rest of this post for the sake of sentence fluidity, know that I’m speaking to any parent who takes a particular, deep interest in his or her child’s learning.)

Anyway, what’s interesting about the skills–or “abilities”–that Pink writes about is that they’re nothing like the logical, linear skills that schools have convinced us that we’ll need. Let’s see if I can summarize.

• Design. Pink says that these days, products, services, and experiences can’t be just functional. “Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.” Design matters! Which validates the time your son spends designing a better skateboard ramp, or your daughter spends making a model Indian kitchen. And it’s another reason why project-based learning can be so valuable: when kids choose their own projects and create them, they’re designers. And the act of designing is almost always fulfilling.
• Story. Hee-haw, you know I love this one! Pink’s point here is that information these days is so accessible that it’s overwhelming. We need people who can present information and data in a compelling way–with story. Story is why you remember the history you’ve learned via historical novels, films, and personal accounts, but not what you learned from a textbook. It’s not so important that our kids memorize a bunch of information; it’s more important that they can shape information into something that’s meaningful and captivating to others. So all those silly Pokemon stories that your kid endlessly rattles off? It’s teaching him to be a storyteller, and it’s good stuff. Keep it going.
• Symphony. This is the skill of being able to gather disparate bits into something new. This particular ability fascinates me for egocentric reasons–it’s a skill I never conceived of before, but it’s one I think I’m pretty good at. For instance, I’ve always belittled myself for not being a very creative cook. I tend to follow recipes, rather than make up my own. But when I think more about it, I realize that when I cook, I actually pull together lots of information. If I want to make a vegetable lasagna, say, my mind will go back to dozens of recipes I’ve looked at or tried over the last twenty years–and frighteningly, I usually remember where I saw them–and I’ll combine ideas from several and create something new, which is creative in its own way. It’s the same skill that had me cutting up and reassembling my writing in my last post; it’s the one that compels me to compile a bunch of ideas into a book. Symphony is the skill of an applied researcher, I suppose, and it’s something that no one ever told me I had talent for. But I see my kids cultivating it constantly in their self-designed projects–like when one combines wii games with Norse myths. Symphony also includes metaphorical thinking, which is an ability that I always admire, as a writer.
• Empathy. The ability to walk in another’s shoes. This isn’t a skill that schools truly value–you don’t see standardized tests measuring empathy. But it is an ability that many parents hope to nurture in their kids. And it’s worth nurturing, not only because it’s noble and decent but, according to Pink, it’s also practical. Many jobs of the future will require people to do what computers can’t–interpret the emotional needs of others.
• Play. Homeschoolers don’t need to be convinced of the importance of play in daily life. We see how much our kids learn from play; we understand that having enough time for play is vital. I found Pink’s chapter on play a bit disappointing; his examples highlighting the importance of play are laughing clubs in India, and the effects of playing video games. Somehow I would have liked more–but I didn’t need to be persuaded. My kids taught me the importance of play years ago.
• Meaning. This is the ability to understand deeper underlying reasons for doing what we do: “purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment”. This is another ability in which homeschoolers have an intrinsic advantage. If our kids have control over what they learn, it gives their learning value and meaning. They aren’t learning for someone else’s purposes, but because their learning matters to them. Pink quotes American journalist Gregg Easterbrook: “A transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on an historically unprecedented scale–involving hundreds of millions of people–and may eventually be recognized as the principal cultural development of our age.” I think homeschoolers are on the forefront of this transition.

Pink devotes a chapter to each ability, followed by a portfolio of ideas for developing those abilities. The story portfolio, for example, encourages the reader to consider writing a 50-word mini saga, to interview and record friends, to visit a storytelling festival (Carrie, I want to do that this year!), to experiment with digital storytelling. So many exciting ideas. It’s a fun book, an enjoyable read–not what I expected from a book in the Business section.

But here’s what thrills me most about this book: My kids use these abilities constantly. There’s a whole lot of right-brained thinking going on around here. But the kids don’t learn this way because their dad and I want them to “rule the future”, as New Mind‘s subtitle says right-brained thinkers will. We don’t homeschool because we want our kids to get into good colleges, or get better jobs. We’ve homeschooled because we want them to be curious, creative people who love to learn, who know their passions and value the notion that those passions might guide their lives. Their learning is kid-driven and mostly project-based because that’s the sort of learning that motivates them.

Pink’s book won’t change our homeschooling. But it does validate what we’re already doing. A Whole New Mind makes me realize that learning driven by kids and based on their interests isn’t just fun, it’s practical. It’s giving them skills that are not only rewarding and fulfilling but–dare I use this word–marketable. And yes, I’ve always known this, always believed it, but it’s awfully nice to read a carefully researched book written for the big, bad Business World that seconds what homeschoolers have always known.

So I think you should read this book. Not because it will change your life, but because it might give you courage to keep at the life you’ve chosen.