How do I I teach my children to write well in English? Even Cameron's teacher is giving him notes on his papers like, "What can I do to get you to write neatly?" And I'm wondering on top of this, "Can he put together an interesting sentence? Without a misspelled word?"
We're getting them to blog! A few years back, it started as "Family Reading Night." After a meal of the week's best leftovers (or popcorn if there's nothing else to eat), we read to each other. We pick highlights of what we've been reading the past week and take turns reading for up to 15 minutes each. It's been a sweet on-mom-and-dad's-big-bed family tradition for awhile now and this year, we've added new components.
First we review Chinese Characters together with Clavis Sinica, a new progam Jim found. Our apartment has a big screen in the living room, which makes what could be mundane into something fun for the family.
After Chinese review, we do some blogging. That's why I'm sitting here. The kids are writing an essay on the highlight(s) of their week, and I'm waiting to help them post it, or answer their, "Mom, how do you spell..." occassional questions. Once this is done and the showers are taken, we finally get to have our reading time.
Tonight we got a late start since Tyler was with 2 of his Singaporean buddies for the afternoon. I'm so glad he's keeping up with their friendships. An answer to prayer, so we didn't mind putting off our family time together in order to give Bob a ride home from Ben's and have some extra time with him in the car (even if it was mostly Cameron annoying them, and Tyler and Bob listening to an MP3 player!)
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