Paper Bridges » My Girls

Daydreaming of the future

Monica Brand — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:45:28 +0000

Susan is off on another adventure.

She’s at my parents’ house. It’s not as far away as camp, but it’s still away from all of us here at home. I know at 12 years, that is the point. Being apart from your siblings and mom and dad. It’s quite the big deal.

I miss her.

Last summer, she came home from Grandma’s declaring she only wanted to do one night away from home. She couldn’t wait to get back home, to her own room, her special things. I know she missed her little sister terribly. Yesterday, she called to ask if she could stay an extra night, making it three nights total. Looks like being away from home for a week at camp has made all the difference.

No homesickness for Susan as a 12 year old.

I’m glad. She having fun with my parents taking her out to her choice of restaurant, a splurge shopping trip at the dollar store, and I think my brother is treating her at the bookstore tonight. She packed three books in her overnight bag. Lots of quiet for reading at my mom’s.

Susan is growing up.

I will miss her.

When your five-year-old sneaks off with the camera

Monica Brand — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:25:12 +0000

You find all sorts of random, goofy pictures. SpongeBob Squarepants (she took 20 shots of the TV show); self portraits (9), the dog (2), a Chuck E. Cheese commercial (horror!) and a few images too dark to tell what it’s supposed to be. I love the obvious freedom and completely in-the-moment attitude. Lookit, me! I’m five!

I look and I love.

I might also be thinking: How the heck did she get away with playing with my not cheap camera for so long?

Curse you, Twitter.

Saturday Snapshot: She knows how to work it

Monica Brand — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:33:54 +0000

Yup. She knows she’s a cutie.

Oh, to be that confident in yourself again!

Boys, girls and an electric drill

Monica Brand — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:41:50 +0000

As a mother, I’m always vigilant for these situations. This is a story from last night’s 4H meeting. Birding club.

I had three of my kids with me, my boys, 10 and 7, and my eldest girl, 12 years old next week. The night’s project was making bird feeders. A dad passed out the supplies: wood pieces, screws, metal sheeting for the roof and demonstrated how to put it together. Simple construction, easy.

The dad had two electric power drills, one by-hand screwdriver. Ten kids waited patiently.

“Why don’t you help her?” Dad said to his son, a boy well versed in power drill. The boy had just finished using it on his own bird feeder. He picked up the screw and began drilling into my daughter’s bird feeder to attach the base.

My daughter watched.

On the other side of the room, another boy, another girl, same scene.

She said nothing, watching as he began to work on her bird feeder project.

I know how to use tools. I’ve used electric saws, table saws, lathes, jigsaws. I took wood shop in 7th grade when it was required. I took wood shop as an elective in high school. I built ramshackle forts in my backyard. I built a skateboard out of old metal wheels and rough wood. I came home in tears from freshman year wood shop due to the caustic remarks from the male teacher. I never took wood shop again.

My daughter is not me. As far as I can tell, she is not interested in carpentry, power drills or building with scraps of wood. She’s more rubber spatula, cake pans and flour. But this was an easy project. All you had to do was screw straight down four times; plus I think everyone should try a tool when given the opportunity.

Make no mistake – I made sure I was gentle, yet firm.

“Wait a minute. That’s her bird feeder.”

“Excuse me. That’s her project. Let her do it.”

I had to repeat myself several times, my voice raised a bit louder each time. Eventually those boys gave way and the girls used the drills by themselves.

Moms, encourage your daughters to try the new, the unfamiliar.

Tell your sons: help doesn’t mean you do it for a girl. Show her, demonstrate. Then hand the tool to her.

Speak up for your girl so she has a turn to try.

Chores for girls: What do your daughters do?

Monica Brand — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:53:58 +0000

My 11 year old daughter, you know her as Susan here on the blog, challenged me to post this question to Facebook, but I decided to cast the info-gathering net wider. So I ask you, blog readers:

Do you have your 11 year old girl clean the bathroom once a week like I do? Clean as in: scrub and wipe down toilet. Wipe down counter and sink. Clean mirror if necessary.

When I was Susan’s age, my sister and I had to dust the dining room furniture every Saturday. With polish. Even if we weren’t having fancy company that required use of the table. Friends, I HATED dusting that table. So many nooks in the woodwork. I truly believe I’ve been scared for life as a result. My husband can attest to my great aversion to dusting the house today. At least Susan is cleaning something that is much more worthy of a good cleaning.

Come on, let me have it. Am I an old meanie or is Susan getting off easy? I’m open to all criticism and advice.

Self portrait by Lucy, 5

Monica Brand — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:06:50 +0000

Watching her read

Monica Brand — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:44:18 +0000

As a mother, and as a lover of fine words and stories, I will never grow weary of watching my children fall in love with reading and books.

This week I witnessed Susan’s relationship with books deepen.

We were at the library, and as chance had it (or maybe it was a God-ordained meeting?), our dear friends came in right behind us. This is the one family in our homeschool fellowship that my children adore, and I believe the feeling is mutual on their part. When we meet, there is much hugging, giggling and shouts of joy. Because we are both homeschooling families, we don’t see much of each other. Busy at home, busy with activities. So a spontaneous, accidental meet-up in the children’s section of the library is a lovely treat.

As I chatted with the mother, I noticed Susan and her friend kneeling on the floor, heads bent towards each other, in between the shelves. They were talking, sharing secrets about something, I was sure of it. I hoped it had to do with books. Usually when we go to the library, I suggest titles to my eleven year old. And she resists, unwilling to try all my old favorites and all the new titles that look appealing to me. Susan would get books about baking or collecting TY Beanie Babies, which is fine, I’m glad she’s interested in collecting and cooking. But what of the fiction? Why wasn’t she falling in love with all those characters I adored as a young girl?

I knew Susan’s friend loved fiction, her mother told me both her daughters read constantly. As I peeked around the bookshelf to watch the girls, I hoped my Susan was considering bringing home fiction this time.

Sure enough, when it came time to leave, Susan had selected several books in the Pony Club series, a Wishbone book and an American Girl title about a blond named Julie. Finally! I thought to myself.

Susan read during the drive home. I think she may have gone straight to her room to read when we got there. Needless to say, she did a lot of reading in a short period of time. Those were easy reads for her, but that’s not the point. For the first time, my girl was captured with an imaginary world found in fiction, so taken in that reading was the activity chosen above all other enticements (computer, a sibling, writing or play).

In two days, Susan had finished all her books and asked to go back to the library for more. We went and she took more books home. Again, Pony Club, American Girl and Wishbone. She read as we walked to the car.

Me again: Finally!

But the story doesn’t stop there.

Last night, the two of us were out for her 4H club meeting. The bookstore open late. Could we go? I’m never one to pass on an opportunity to be surrounded with the written word, and I want to encourage her, so we went.

And this time our visit was remarkably different.

Susan went straight to the juvenile fiction section, found City of Ember and embraced it like an old friend. No Pony Club this time. She said she wanted a “thicker chapter book.” Last night there was no plea for a Klutz book, what she usually wants; she’s crazy for the ones with the fill in the blank pages.

Right now, it’s almost 10:30 and she came out of her bedroom looking overtired. Susan fed the bunnies, ignoring food and Internet, and is now back in her bedroom, door shut. It’s a gray day and we have no plans to take us away from the house. I suspect she will be finished with her new book by nightfall.

It’s going to be a beautiful day.

The birth of a writer

Monica Brand — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:27:09 +0000

“My story was published on Nicktropolis yesterday, Mommy.”

My story. This was a short story Susan wrote without any help from me, and as a intentional home schooling mom, that is saying a lot. I like to think I had enough sense to stay out of her way, allowing her to discover her love for writing and words on her own.

But let me back up for a second. I’m getting ahead of the beginning of the story of how this all came to be. This is a post about my eldest – whom I refer to as Susan. I’ve recorded my son’s reading journey and how I’ve come to let go of my expectations for him. Now I want to tell you about Susan. This is her story: her birth as a writer.

The beginning

Susan’s home schooling began at age six with math, oral grammar and lots of read alouds. (You can read earlier posts about teaching her here and here.)

By age seven, she was reading on her own. We continued with oral grammar lessons and read alouds. I assigned her books that she was interested in reading, like Little House on the Prairie or a Rod and Staff reader. We dabbled with history. She did Awana. She loved attending church. She visited with Grandma. She lived life.

The one thing Susan did not do was write. No book reports. No creative writing. No required writing of any kind. I did attempt the first level of Writing Stands, but it was quickly abandoned. “She’s not ready for this” was my reasoning. She did copy work easily. Sometimes Susan would write a letter to a friend, but it was always her idea and for fun.

Whenever we came across a writing assignment in Spelling Workout or Story of the World, I would have her skip it. The one thing I did require from her was narrations. And, how she hated those! Those narrations, done a few times a week, was the closest she ever got to a formal writing assignment.

We continued with a mix of oral and written grammar lessons. Still reading lots of books; Susan developed a fondness for non-fiction (reference books, Fandex and the dictionary are a few). We traveled. We stayed busy.

And she played a lot with her non-reading, younger siblings.

Connecting it all

Susan read books and magazines to her brothers and sister; sometimes the text they shared would become part of their imaginary play. Susan began making up her own stories based on toys and imaginary creatures of their playtime. This oral storytelling, along with input from her siblings, morphed into her forming her own stories in the privacy of her room, or in the backyard, away from interruptions – a talkative toddler and pesky boys (and perhaps even me, her hovering, homeschooling mother.)

Needless to say, it wasn’t much of a leap to begin writing these stories down on to the computer.

All of this without formal writing lesson from me.

This week, at age of 11, she proudly read me a short story she submitted to a kid’s website, thrilled with the comments she gets from her peers. My girl is a confident writer. Her grammar and punctuation are excellent; spelling fine. The art of well-crafted fiction she will be learning for the rest of her life, but for now – most importantly – she enjoys writing. It’s fun, bringing her joy and a sense of accomplishment.

Now if only I can transfer that passion to fractions…

Seen and heard: comment on toast crust

Monica Brand — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:30:12 +0000

Lucy hits it out the ballpark blog again with this gem: “Look, mommy! It looks like a shot gun!” And it did. Seen and heard: comment on toast crust is a post from: Paper Bridges, © 2005-2010 Monica Brand Related posts:Two busy people: the difference is one needs supervision, the other to keep a sense [...]

Cooking up fun

Monica Brand — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:01:19 +0000