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jawgee
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| Posted: Sept 11 2012 at 10:48am | IP Logged
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Do any of your kids keep a blog or do online notebooking? I'm thinking of setting something up with my 10YO for his history narrations and his science notebooking (we're doing Noeo Science this year and notebooking is a big part of it).
Suggested sites or resources? I'm completely new at this. I don't even have a blog of my own. I think this would encourage my son to do more, though. He likes computers and doesn't like writing. (I'm sure that sounds familiar. LOL).
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SallyT
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| Posted: Sept 11 2012 at 7:33pm | IP Logged
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Mine have done so off and on. My now-18-year-old began blogging at 11-ish, I think - she's gone through several blogs by now. (Here's her current and rather cute college-student one). My now-14-year-old son made a couple of stabs at writing one, but he hasn't been that into it. I guess girls do the chatty thing . . .
We have always used Blogger.com (my own blog is on Blogger), which is free and can be set to whatever level of privacy you want. A good MO for a child's blog is to make it subscriber-only and invite people, including yourself, to join via their email addresses. Blogger walks you through this whole process in its "Permissions" and "Privacy" settings ("Permissions" governs who can write/read the blog; "Privacy" governs how findable it is on things like Google. You can set it not to appear in any online searches).
Blogger is also very user-friendly -- it's easy to upload pictures, for instance.
It might help to have him think of a theme for his blog -- Science News, History Digest, or something like that. He could even come up with a persona -- my son at 9 briefly wrote a blog in the persona of a monkey (though once you've written, "Hello, I am a monkey," you find yourself somewhat limited in scope).
It also might help to have him imagine writing *to* someone -- not you, necessarily, but some imaginary audience. My same son also did a brief stint writing a blog in which he played a sort of news-digest announcer, telling the world about whatever current events had caught his eye. I think I was the only one reading it (it was called something like The Pessimistic Optimist, and it was a little more lively than the monkey one), but there was always that possibility that he was entertaining and informing millions . . .
I haven't thought about having my younger kids (now 10 and 8) do blogs, but perhaps I will . . . the reading-journal thing is not going so totally well, especially for the 10-year-old boy. Thanks for the reminder!
Sally
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SallyT
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| Posted: Sept 12 2012 at 4:26am | IP Logged
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On reflection, I'm also thinking that a blog might be a more successful composition exercise if the young writer had control over what he wrote -- ie if it were less like a school assignment and more like some kind of real-life writing, on a topic of personal interest (I could see my 10-year-old doing a blog devoted to Star Wars lego . . . ). If your goal is more fluency and enjoyment in writing, it might be wise to let him choose the theme, so that he can be the "expert" in whatever it is.
I think a lot of times kids, especially at this age, "don't like to write" because they instinctively think, "I'm a kid. What do I have to say about x, y, or z? This book already said it all. If Mom wants to know about it, she should read the book." But there usually is *something* that 10-year-old boys know about in detail.
This may be departing a bit from your more CM-focused objective, and I may be off-base anyway, but as I mull the idea for my own 10-year-old, it's what I'm thinking -- that I'd use it more as a way to encourage writing in general, which eventually would transfer to more willingness and fluency in assigned writing on given topics.
Sally
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Willa
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| Posted: Sept 14 2012 at 10:16am | IP Logged
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What Sally describes is what I do...
My teenager started a private blog for his story writing. He sends the link to family members and friends who are interested. It's his project.
I started a more schooly blog for my 9 year old a couple of years back, but it evolved into a place for him to write stories (that he dictated to me).
I think a blog for narrations etc would be a great way to recordkeep, and something like an electronic notebook -- and it is very easy, so if you do think it would help, go for it  I have trouble getting organized to maintain a paper notebook, so usually blogs and e-documents are the only way I ever successfully record-keep and store pieces of writing, etc.
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MichelleW
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| Posted: Sept 14 2012 at 11:27am | IP Logged
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My daughter started her blog last year at 12. Now she has 2 blogs that she maintains. I think it is a great tool. She uses Wordpress.
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Homeschoolers-online notebooking;blogging
