Wild Idea Wednesday - Living Language Arts

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

So I have to admit that I'm not feeling particularly creative or full of "wild ideas" today. On top of the fact that we're not really in school mode yet, I had work come in from three clients all at once. Please forgive me that homeschooling is not at the forefront of my mind today, but I really did want to take a stab at my first Wild Idea Wednesday.

Fortunately, I got some great inspiration from Jan Zeiger at our recent homeschool evaluation. After reviewing Noah's portfolio, she suggested incorporating more authentic language arts experiences rather than relying on just workbooks. Since Noah's not big on repetition or writing just for the sake of practicing, her suggestions really struck a chord. In fact, I could think of so many things he'd done on his own that would have made great language arts projects - I just never thought to consider them part of "school". For example, when he was really interested in hamsters and we checked out several books from the library, he created his own book about hamsters - wrote a page on each topic, drew pictures and staples it all together - all while I was busy doing who knows what.

She gave me plenty of great suggestions - have him write the grocery list, find a penpal, etc., but I also wanted to find what would be of most interest to him. One day a few weeks later, he shared a joke he'd made up and told me it might be in a joke book one day . . . so I asked if he wanted to write one (and of course, he does). In addition to writing about something that interests him, I like that it's something we can work on over the course of the year, adding a little at a time as the mood strikes.