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Elizabeth
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| Posted: April 27 2005 at 6:11am | IP Logged
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I love the whole concept of the Brave Writer Lifestyle (looks a lot like the Real Learning lifestyle to me  ). Really, it's what we've been doing all along. But, I'm feeling a bit like the frog who begins in cool water and slowly, the heat goes up until he's boiling. If I'd been spending this much time in front of the computer right from the beginning, I might have looked for a different way.
We've been working on Pope notebooks the past couple of weeks. I'm also creating a First Communion notebook with my six-year-old. My children all still require a good deal of editing and keyboarding help when writing for keepsakes like this. They also need help finding images on the web and formatting pages and then cutting and pasting, both IRL and on the computer. I want each of them to have one of his/her own. But I feel like I didn't get out of the computer chair all day yesterday (and the day before that and...)!
I read the Brave WRiter prompts and I'm grateful for them, but I need some ideas for a management system. When so much of writing at this stage is dictation (to me) and keyboarding (by me) or editing (with me). How do I juggle all of them?
Alice, how many of yours made Easter notebooks and Pope notebooks? How did you manage it? What were the little ones doing? With the Pope's notebook, I'm tempted to put together a memory book even for the littlest one. What did you do?
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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juliecinci
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| Posted: April 27 2005 at 7:08am | IP Logged
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Elizabeth, you are so right about the labor intensive nature of writing with kids who aren't yet fluent. It's like having quadruplets to breastfeed! How do you juggle it all?
I have a couple of suggestions. Can you stagger them? Can you work with two this week and two next week and two the following week?
Do you have anyone old enough to help with downloading pictures, formatting, cutting, pasting, printing etc?
I forget how old your oldest is, but I put my teens to work  when I need that kind of help and they are expert on the computers compared to me anyway so they get more done more quickly usually (with that stuff other than typing).
Also, you can do the computer stuff (typing) when they are in bed and spread it out. Think flylady here. Do fifteen minutes of entry per day and stop.
Don't feel pressure to get it all done by a particular date but make steady progress each day (or every other day) until you are done.
Don't forget the "one thing" principle. You only need to do one thing well at a time. So perhaps today is just typing in the freewriting. Stop. Save editing for another day. Maybe today is about finding one good photo that everyone can use. Find it, format it, print it and stop. Mount it and give it a caption next week.
I hope others with more kids will chime in. I have five kids which is already a handful, but you're got seven so I know that is exponentially more than me.
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Julie
Homeschooling five for fourteen years
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momwise
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| Posted: April 27 2005 at 8:40am | IP Logged
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juliecinci wrote:
| Do you have anyone old enough to help with downloading pictures, formatting, cutting, pasting, printing etc? |
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I do this all the time. My teens (13, 15) will do just about anything for me if it's on the computer! We only did one notebook as a family for the Pope's life and death and the conclave.
The younger children usually only do a small homemade book or lapbook and they do a lot of their own artwork.
I put my (then 7) 8yr. old ds on the typing tutor last year and he is really typing well. So now he does some of his own typing. It's still a struggle though. Three of them have weekly narrations, dictation and corrections, etc., etc. I have started to pray to the Holy Spirit and my Guardian Angel with these time crunches and it really clears my mind and helps me to see what I need to work on.
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Gwen...wife for 30 years, mom of 7, grandma of 3.....
"If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life." JPII
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alicegunther
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| Posted: April 27 2005 at 10:00am | IP Logged
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Elizabeth wrote:
Alice, how many of yours made Easter notebooks and Pope notebooks? How did you manage it? What were the little ones doing? With the Pope's notebook, I'm tempted to put together a memory book even for the littlest one. What did you do? |
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Dear Elizabeth and all,
The older four (ages 11, 9, 7, and 5) made the Easter Vigil notebooks, but only the older three made papal notebooks. My five year old wanted to make one, but, like you, I only have so much time. Instead, I gave her and my 3 year old lots of coloring pages, pictures, glue and markers so they could work at the table while the others put their notebooks together. I also included the little two in any read alouds we shared and gave them the same stickers and scrapbooking supplies I provided for the others. During the Easter Vigil project, Neil (age 3) spent a lot of time coloring and entertaining the baby (age 1). It certainly can be a juggling act!
I have always found it to be a struggle to type narrations and other materials for the children. During the Easter Vigil project, for example, I was typing narrations for each of the Mass readings. By the third narration of the same material, I was feeling pretty exhausted to say the least! I've said it before, and I'll say it again, what we really need around here is a professional court stenographer to take down narrations!
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Love, Alice
mother of seven!
     
Cottage Blessings
Brew yourself a cup of tea, and come for a visit!
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Leonie
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| Posted: April 27 2005 at 8:16pm | IP Logged
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Elizabeth,
I planned to do the Easter notebooks but we packed and moved interstate, lived in a motel, found a house and moved in during Easter week! So, we didn't get those done. 
I thought the JP II notebooks sounded wonderful - but my dc didn't. So, we took up journal entries instead - writing/dictating/drawing/copywork in our journals about the Pope, his passing and funeral, the conclave and the new Pope. A day by day account - not as beautiful as a notebook but do-able for us right now. And a great future record.
I let all the BaveWriter emails clog up their own special folder on my computer! lol! Sorry Julie!
I love the ideas but we are so busy with the dc's own rabbit trails that we don't get to Bravewriter - and I plan to finish with the editing, lapbook making etc at 12 noon most days so we can get to teatime and read aloud or outside nature study before lunch.
Yes, our projects take longer and we seem to produce less than some other families, but if I don't pick and choose what we do and if I don't have a rough plan of an enforced stopping time, I find that I will spend all day indoors and the projects will seem endless.
Leonie in Sydney
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juliecinci
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| Posted: April 27 2005 at 10:18pm | IP Logged
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No, no! Never apologize to me for NOT doing something. I am the ONE note johnny over here. I don't even follow my emails.
I like to send the reminders as memory joggers - they help you to remember what you want to do so that you will make time for those things on a rotating basis. But I would go nuts trying to do everything every day.
Better to pick one email a day to do and delete the rest. The variety gives you some selection to choose from. Over time, you will experience them all and more than once or twice. That's the idea.
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Julie
Homeschooling five for fourteen years
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BrendaPeter
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| Posted: April 28 2005 at 9:13pm | IP Logged
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Hi Elizabeth,
We are also working on the Pope notebooks and trying to incorporate more of a Bravewriter lifestyle. Although I have six dc, I think (?) mine are a little more manageable because I really have 3 groups of 2 - 2 ds who are 9 & 10, 6-year-old twins, a toddler and an infant.
The Pope notebook has been an incredible project - mom is enjoying it as much as, or more so, than the kids. Thanks, Alice! We (the 2 oldest & I) work on the Pope notebook (which for now is taking the place of our B of C & Nature notebooks) in the afternoons while the little ones nap. The way we do a page is that I'll usually read something to them and they'll narrate it back - I'm typing for only 2 of them (as opposed to you & Alice). I'm usually the one who finds the pictures on the internet - although they are starting to help with this. When we photocopy pictures (for example from "An Invitation to Joy" - I hope that's okay to do, copywrite-wise!), they do those themselves. One thing I've really learned with this project is that these books are THEIRS. I find myself wanting to enhance their narrations or arrange their pictures on the page a little differently or even use different-colored paper (!!), but I'm realizing that it needs to be their project that they can look back on with pride. When I let them work more independently, I find that it really frees me up to do other things.
I spend about an hour in the morning with the twins either reading to them (they narrate once-twice/week), helping them learn to read and working on a math page. Once they do "school" with me, they seem satisfied and spend the rest of the day playing, practicing piano or drawing. They did do the Pope coloring pages which were helpful. I know my 6-year-old ds would just love to do a Pope notebook too but I really can't afford the time with her and know we'll work on so many fun projects together in the upcoming years.
Right now the pages the boys create for their Pope notebooks are their main narrations. I also have them sporadically narrate whatever I'm reading aloud to them (currently "Amos Fortune"). Last week they watched a movie and I think they narrated parts of it to me for 3 solid days. These narrations are just the quick "on the fly" variety, but I "count" these as narrations and, as such, we're doing quite a bit of narrating each week.
During the mornings, my 2 oldest usually do a page in their math workbook, we'll work on memorization (poem, catechism) and they test each other on their latin vocabulary. Also during this time, I've been having them do freewrites once/week with the timer set for 10 minutes. That has been going very well! I think one of my sons is actually quite the writer (unlike his mom!) so that was a fun discovery. The plan right now is that we'll take their best one sometime down the road and clean it up. This week we started using "The Arrow" issue from "Farmer Boy" that Julie has posted. The boys loved that description of Almanzo and are using it for copywork. I typed it into Start Write the proper way for copywork, then I typed it again without punctuation which I'll present to them as a challenge after they've gotten familiar with the passage.
Elizabeth - I hope this "mish-mash" that I've written helps you in some way!  I'm more of a scheduled person and I'm finding that a schedule (ala "MROL") is pretty necessary for our family to accomplish anything. (It's essential in order for me to also pray throughout the day.) Things do go more slowly this way - we'll maybe do only 3 pages of the notebook each week because we schedule it in and there's limited time for it.
Blessings,
Brenda (mom to 6)
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Elizabeth
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| Posted: April 29 2005 at 5:05am | IP Logged
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BrendaPeter wrote:
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Elizabeth - I hope this "mish-mash" that I've written helps you in some way! I'm more of a scheduled person and I'm finding that a schedule (ala "MROL") is pretty necessary for our family to accomplish anything. (It's essential in order for me to also pray throughout the day.) Things do go more slowly this way - we'll maybe do only 3 pages of the notebook each week because we schedule it in and there's limited time for it.
Blessings,
Brenda (mom to 6)
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Dear Brenda,
This is an interesting perspective. I'm not a schedule person (though I've made plenty of them). Usually, my best writing projects are the ones I've done in the middle of the night after inspiration has hit so hard that I can't sleep without getting it all on paper first.
I've passed that on to my children, apparently. Once we ignite a fire (and we really did with the Pope project) there is a frenzy to get it all on paper. And, since I am the vehicle to their expression, I keyboard nonstop during a creative burst. Interestingly, my artist (who is sixteen, likes to write and can do it all by himself) often spends the first few days (or even weeks) of a projects binge-drawing. It just now occurred to me that his need to draw is a restless one as well. It's a pre-writing exercise as a well as a worthy endeavor on its own.
Some of this might just be personality...
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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BrendaPeter
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| Posted: April 29 2005 at 1:25pm | IP Logged
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Elizabeth wrote:
Usually, my best writing projects are the ones I've done in the middle of the night after inspiration has hit so hard that I can't sleep without getting it all on paper first.
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Dear Elizabeth,
I think this explains why you & your kids like unit studies so much! I suspect this is also typical of many artistic personality types. Now if I could just have a little of you thrown in with my personality....
Blessings,
Brenda (mom to 6)
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Elizabeth
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| Posted: April 29 2005 at 1:39pm | IP Logged
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...and if I could stick to a schedule a little more...
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Brave Writers in big families
