documenting stories

A lot of stories have been emerging from many of Sky's drawings recently.
She is delighted that she has a scribe available whenever a story begins to form in her mind and especially enjoys them read back to her.
Of course I, the scribe, am honoured to be of service to the emerging story and the emergent writer.

At 5 Sky finds the mechanics of writing fairly tiresome and demand a lot of attention; muscle control, the shapes of letters, let alone the formation of words.
Sky's writing progresses as meaningful tasks present themselves. Short, succinct letters to family and friends, notes, lists, love letters to her parents are all writing opportunities arising naturally in her daily life.

The stories that have been stepping from her drawings however are an utterly different kind of writing task.
Her excitement is with the story itself and not with the writing it down.
I offer to write it for her, she passes me the pen and paper and dives into the telling of her tale.

Listening and writing for Sky as she experiments with structure, content, grammar and vocabulary creates a precious exchange between us. I get to be silent and really listen and observe her. Sky sits in the driver's seat of her learning and enjoys the challenges that come with such things as finding her own voice and making her own decisions as a writer.

I often offer to write things down for them.
It's a gift I treasure.

(Note: immediately after the last photo was taken in the previous post a jug of water fell on the camera. So, there won't be many photos for a while, perhaps just a few from my files. Wish the camera luck.)

2 comments:

  1. Oh, what a lovely, loving post! My lil' fellow is just bursting forth with his first words- something that has taken me quite by suprise, and delight!
    How precious to think that one day I too shall be 'scribing' his adventures for him :-D. Bless!*

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    1. Delightful first words. Delightful first stories.

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