Progress when you least expect it

I knew that H. had been working very diligently on something, but truthfully, I wasn't quite sure what it was. I knew she was drawing and writing, but hadn't paid much attention past that. This young lady never ceases to amaze me. Take a look at what she was up to.

This is one of three pages that she has crated. Each picture has a different story with it. What I find fascinating is how she has created something new out of what she has been reading on her own and what we have been doing in school. One page has four little stories all about Peanuts characters. H. adores comic books, and I will often come across her reading them to herself and laughing. I don't need to tell you how much this warms my heart, I'm sure. Well, if I ever wondered if she was getting anything out of her reading, I can put that vague concern to rest. In her Peanuts stories, she has drawn a character and then written a bit a bout that character. This is not copy work, but retelling what she has read in her own words. The page above has stories about crayons. This is clearly influenced by the picture book, The Day the Crayons Quit (which is a fun picture book if you haven't come across it). She doesn't tell the story of the book, though. Instead, she uses the idea of crayons as the main characters and creates her own stories about them. This one is my favorite.

"There was a crayon. She sang a song and (s)he loved summer a lot. But sometimes she loves snow and the summertime ..." I asked H. what the last word was, and she looked at it and shook her head. She was a little bemused that she couldn't figure out what she had written. This is happened with every single one of my inventive spellers, and is the first step towards understanding that words are spelled a certain way for a reason... ease of communication.

The little boxes she has created came from our architecture study. As we learn about each building, they are drawing it in a small box then cutting them out and we are locating them on a map. H. is quite taken with the idea of drawing things in a set space and has been making dozens and dozens of drawings this way. 

I find both of these things to be enormous leaps in development. Leaps the like of which I admit to never even allowing myself to dream she would reach. No longer do I have a child who has no inner life and no understanding of creating something original. For so long she could only copy. For so long she was unable to fill her time without direction. For so long she was so fearful that being curious about the world around her wasn't a possibility. For her to use her own words to tell a story she read to herself is huge. (There were years when all we worked on was reading comprehension.) For her to come up with her own unique way of telling the stories she wants to share is even more important, in my opinion. A person cannot do this without having developed some sort of inner life, some curiosity, some self-volition. These are the things I have always hoped for her to develop. It makes me a little emotional.

I also want to show you the schoolwork she did today on her own.

This is for our architecture unit. We began to mount the small drawing people have done about the buildings we have learned about, using yarn to connect them to where they each are in the world. (As an aside, if you decide to do this as well, take my advice and for the Ancient Wonders, use a large map of the Mediterranean because it gets a little messy when so many things are in such a small area.) As I have mentioned, H. was terribly taken with the small frames for drawings, and she went through the books we have been reading and drew about twice as many pictures as I asked for. Once I explained the assignment, I went off to dig out the laundry situation, leaving everyone so figure things out on their own. With no extra instruction. H. understood what was asked, used the books to figure out where everything was, and did this on her own. For the most part, it is also entirely correct. (I'm certainly not going to quibble about the few that are misplaced.) This, too, is astounding to me. These were complex instructions with the added complication of having to figure out where each building was, yet look at this! 

I am stunned. Totally and completely stunned. In a good way... but it feels as though this jump has come out of the blue. Just stunned.