Squee!

Omigosh!  How did I not notice that my Bloggy Miyagis have reached 200!?!  Oh, my dears, you know what that means... oh yes.. I must brew me up another contest!  I will probably hold off for another month or so because when school ends (JUNE 18TH!) my mind will be clearer and I'll be paying better attention to super fun things like WRITING and BLOGGING and READING BLOGS and COUNTING FOLLOWERS... lol... ok, maybe not that last part, but HAVING CONTESTS TO CELEBRATE YOUR BEING HERE!  Awesomeness and good times... and yet another reason for me to look forward to school ending!  Lol :)

Well, since I have been sadly neglectful of my writing of late, guess what has happened?  Tootsie Roll, my 7 yr old, has become more interested in writing than ever.  I love that she feels like writing is "our thing", because we both love it and we can hang out together and write and bond.  I had a first grade parent in for a conference on Friday and she mentioned that she wants to keep her son up with his academics over the summer (to which I added, make sure he plays a lot, too).  She said that she found plenty of reading and math practice but had a hard time finding writing exercises.  I said to her, in the nicest way - He's 6.  Making him do writing exercises will make him hate writing.  Instead, I suggested doing realistic and important writing with her - writing grocery lists for her, keeping a journal between them where they write to each other, and making sure he sees her write for enjoyment.

That last piece is interesting.  I go through this with parents at the beginning of first grade every year - I tell them how I used to always read after my kids went to bed but then I went to a workshop once and the workshop leader asked all of us if we are being reading role models to our own kids.  Do your kids see you as a reader?  Do you read for enjoyment in front of them.... often?  Do they see that it's an activity that you enjoy and choose to do?

It wasn't right away that I realized that this same rule can be placed on writing.  This is a harder one for a lot of adults - probably not many of you here, reading this blog, because many of you are writers.  But in the general public, I don't think a lot of parents write... for enjoyment... in front of their kids.  So I eventually phased this one in as well, especially when my older daughter reached school age and then even more so with this blog.  Tootsie Roll loves to write on the computer but she also knows that I prefer writing in pen on paper, so she always has those things handy, too.  Lately, she has decided that our bedtime ritual will include writing together before we read together.  Tonight, she wanted to write poems together, so she handed me a piece of stationery and asked me what I wanted to write about.  I said hmm, looked around, and my eyes landed on her collection of little nutcrackers, so I said, "Nutcracker."  She said, "Oh!  Me too!"  So we laid on the floor together and we decided to write acrostics.  We each wrote the word NUTCRACKER down the left side of our pages and then we began to write.  A few lines in, she asked me what I had written, so I showed her, and she showed me, and then we switched and continued each other's poems.  Then we switched again, and then again.  The finished poems, co-authored by me and Tootsie Roll:

Not so
Ugly,
The
Cracker of nuts
Rests before the
Attack.
Clara
Kisses her
Energetic
Rescuer.

Nestled
Under
The
Christmas tree,
Ready to
Attack
Chomping
King Mouse, the
Evil
Rival.

(we were passing them back and forth, but my favorite part that she came up with is "chomping King Mouse, the Evil Rival".  Love it!)  I love that writing is something that brings my daughter and me together.  I have noticed a blossoming confidence in her writing since I have been more open about mine.  So putting this dream out there has yet another unexpected and wonderful consequence!