Summer School Writing

We are on day 12 of home-summer-school. Once again, I have a new appreciation for teachers and their ability to keep students on task, especially first thing in the morning when everyone is less than awake. Still, we are making progress, focusing on language arts. We do daily reading and comprehension activities. The girls have written quite a few pieces, some more successful than others. I have had them hand-write and type their work, giving them opportunity to work on handwriting and keyboarding.

Both girls loathe editing, my younger daughter in particular. We all struggle with spelling, but her struggles are more particular and fiercer because of her learning disability. This morning, she typed:

"I do not like spelling because it's hard to me. I cannot hear the letters. I cry when I spell. But, I try and try again. So, kids, keep on trying."

While I have not actually seen her cry at home, I do get daily doses of her frustration. We use tools like the spelling dictionary and spell-check to help. We have spelling bees and play Scrabble. And of course, we read. I am seeing progress in her reading which makes us both proud.

My older daughter has really thrown herself into reading which thrills me! Her comprehension is not always what it should be (probably because she guesses at the meaning of some words), but she has delved head first into the Little House series I have been hoping she would read.

On Monday, we watched the Civil War production at Manassas Battlefield Park. I intended to have them write about the movie as soon as it finished; however, the film proved to be more emotionally challenging than we anticipated. I prefaced the movie by having them review an interactive CD at home. The movie was nothing like the CD. The full color, re-living of Bull Run, not just black and white photos with narration or graves in the fields themselves, depicted war in ways I have shielded from the girls and limited for myself. I wish the park had posted a "sensitive viewer" warning on the film so we at least could have prepared.

I did have the girls write about the experience the following day when we were less emotional. My older daughter wrote:

"What I learned from the video on the 14th of July is that the volunteers to fight in the civil war were very young and they thought that the war would only last for a day. But they were proven wrong, many of the volunteers never returned home. The southern army, or the confederates, was under the command of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The northern army, or the union, was under the command of U.S. Grant. The battle of Manassas was the most bloodiest battle of the civil war.

"The stone house that is in the battle grounds was used as a hospital. When the injured soldiers were in the stone house hospital the men would carve there names on the wood floor. Many men died do to infected wounds. But most of the men both north and south were captives to the opposite side that they were on. It is tragic that so many honest men had to die and never return home to there families again."

Let's just say that this summer has been a learning experience for all of us.