Loves the Thesaurus

In her writing assignments with the Institute of Excellence in Writing curriculum that she has been doing the last few months there are some banned words. When Sophie writes she isn't allowed to use words like got/get, say/said, go/went, good/bad, etc. The goal is to get her to use stronger verbs and better descriptive adjectives.  I introduced her to the thesaurus recently and now she can't seem to write a paragraph with out it. She loves looking up words to find synonyms. I have even caught her just reading it.  I don't blame her, words are fun!

Here is her paragraph from today's lesson.  She didn't score full points since she didn't include an alliteration or a simile. She also did not include one of the sentence openers they taught her in her last lesson but I think she did remarkably well. Her writing is vastly improving and she seems to enjoy the process a little more now. It does require more work which she does fight at times but I think she is exploring the creative aspects of writing a little more since we switched to this program for writing.

The assignment was to read through a page of text describing how beavers build dams, outline the main points and then write a short summary paragraph.

Dwelling of Safety


Beavers build their homes soundly so that opponents can't harm them. They build their lodges at night so that enemies can't see them. Firstly, they accumulate sticks and rocks to form a mound. Then place more on top of the mound to make it higher than water level. After that, bevers tunnel to the center from under the water, dig it out, and create a room. They gather small twigs, which they eat and use to repair their lodge, for when they live in their homes all winter. The lodge is a secure dwelling.

It isn't perfect but it is so much better than what she used to write!

Try Chinese

Over the past few weeks I have have had a very difficult time getting Sophie to write anything. She throws tantrums about doing copy work. Hates having to do write ups for Science or History. She won't even write a story to go along with a picture she draws. So I was a little shocked to see what her new favorite free time activity is.

I picked up a number of books about China, Chinese New Year, and one book called Long is a Dragon , which is about Chinese writing.
Sophie has spent a lot of time with this book the last few days. She made a bunch of Valentines to give to family with Chinese proverbs on them. She has been making up sentences and writing them in English and then Chinese. She writes them left to right like we do in English rather than vertical like Chinese is usually written. I am not complaining at least she is writing.

These are some of her early attempts. I didn't get pictures of the really good ones before she gave them to Grandma and Grandpa.

I love it that she finds things to entertain herself like this. Our table, the past two weeks has almost always been covered with little scraps of paper she has cut into dragons, masks or Valentines of some sort, each with a little chinese saying on them.

I need to stop getting so frustrated that she doesn't write enough. She finds ways to learn what she need to as long as I fill our home with interesting books and supplies to create with. She takes over the rest.