Progress is Being Made...

Collection of Works

.... finally!  Thanks to some help from Mom and 2 amazing first grade teachers at my son's elementary school, I have printed, collated and bound copies of the book his class has worked so hard on!  If you ask me it turned out to be pretty awesome!  I was able to work with the entire class divided into 4 separate groups.  Each group came up with an outline/idea and then worked together to make a short story (book) or a collection of poems.

The best part was getting to watch the kids revel in the ability to use their imagination in writing.  At this age, the curriculum taught to children when it comes to writing reminds me of a technical writing class one might take in college.  Of course they are learning the basics like punctuation, using capital letters and parts of speech (ie nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) which is very important.  I am not discounting how important this is, I promise. Plus it's been super cute listening to my seven year old tell me I used a lot of good adjectives when giving him a compliment this year!  (Have I mention recently how much I think my kid rocks??)

However, to teach these very important beginning principles, the curriculum uses writing nonfiction as it's base.  In some ways that's very good.  It helps kids to be more organized in their thoughts when they are writing, it teaches basic outlining skills, and it helps keep a wandering mind (like mine and my son's) more focused on the task at hand.  However, nowadays, schools are getting more and more away from creativity.  Less music programs, less art programs, less crayons and markers in the regular classroom, less imagination.

Where would this world be without people's imaginations?  Without imagination we would never have the wonderful inventions that we can't live without!  (My ipod for example)  Anyway, I feel very honored that my son's teacher was open and excited to offer the kids the opportunity to be creative!  So, I had 20 first graders that worked extremely hard on imagining, creating, collaborating, compromising, editing, and most importantly writing 4 unique works that are part of their "book"!  I am so proud of each and every one of them.  But I am even more grateful to our teacher who believes that children should be allowed to be creative.  That teaching creativity is as important as teaching the basics!

Okay, I will get off my bandwagon now.  ;-)  What the take-away from all this is that I am getting things done.  The books were one of my major items looming over my head as the end of school-year came around.  So it feels good to be so productive!  Also, I well-deserved thank you to all the kids and teaching staff that made this project possible in the first place.  (Let's also not forget Mom for helping get this thing all together by collating and binding!)  YAY! for progress!!