Friday, September 25, 2009

Benjamin becomes a writer


Benjamin has a writing workshop each day in his class. He is beginning not just to tell stories, which he has been doing for about a year: now he wants me to write the story he dictates.

Here is tonight's endeavor. After making sharks with play dough, he wanted to write this story.

About Fish

Sharks have teeth. Sharks eat fish. Sharks eat snakes. Sharks swim. Sharks leave all the time. Sharks go to their family. Sharks play together and wrestle. Sometimes they be alone by themselves. When sharks be alone, sometimes they be worried about fish. When they show up together, sometimes they lose their teeth, sometimes they get bigger teeth when they have grown.

Some sharks don’t have teeth because they just bite hard. When they do something, somebody catch fish, sometimes the sharks are the first ones there.

When they get some fish they play together, when they don’t like fish they open their mouth and take them out. When they play together and when they eat snakes, they are together. When they play together, they are responsible.

Friday, September 18, 2009

The Force

The pull away is almost as strong as the pull toward.

We walked to school this morning, the end of Ben’s second week as a kindergartner. At the top of the hill, he met up with a neighbor and friend, and said he wanted to walk in alone. I fell back a bit.

Ben spun around. “No, Mom, I can walk alone. I want to walk alone.”

“OK,” said I, “I’ll just walk behind to make sure you get to your room.”

“You do NOT need to make sure I get to my room. I know where my room is.”

“OK, I know you do. Do I get a little hug?”

A serious eye roll with hand on hip followed. Then he ran back to me and gave me a huge hug.

“Maybe you could walk with me and say hello to my teacher?” he asked.

Of course I obliged.