My daughter's first pages :-)
I have a DD (8 yo) and DS (6 yo) and we saw a hummingbird at our feeder yesterday. It was the first one the kids were able to see up close. I took that as an opportunity to inspire our daughter to create her first notebooking page.
I opened up the free basic pages and let her pick what kind of page she wanted to use. Our son was excited and wanted some of his own, too. I helped pick some that were just for artwork, since he is easily intimidated by writing.
Our daughter sat down while I was making dinner and drew different hummingbirds with markers on her first page, and then wrote 'humming birds' in her own spelling across the top. My perfectionism tried to kick in when she showed it to me. I did my best to encourage her and gently help her remember how to spell parts of the word, but continued to give her lots of compliments about her page. :-)
This morning before breakfast, she took the other page (which had about 4 primary writing lines and a smaller area for art at the top) and she talked with me about an eagle she saw last summer. She drew the eagle, and then wrote about it in two lines. She had a very hard time spelling again and did ask how to spell one of the words.
She is trying very hard to sound out the words. I am trying to let her write them on her own, and I remind her that she can ask me how to spell something if she needs me to help. It *is* hard to not want to correct what she is writing, but when I let her be creative and share things in her own words, spelling and art, she gets SO excited and so proud when she is finished with her page. Her eyes light up. I don't want to extinguish that. :-) I also think it will REALLY help her be more confident about writing on her own as we progress.
I just had to share! I am so excited. Our son hasn't shown a lot of interest in it yet, I will continue to encourage him. I think once I start doing my own pages, he will want to join in if we're all creating something.
