Daily Life - A Week of Bravewriter's Partnership Writing

We're a week into Bravewriter's Partnership Writing.

 It's Monday, and there's just time to squeeze in some copy work before heading off to circus class.
I choose a sentence from our current read aloud, Neil Armstrong: Young Flyer and write it into Yoshi's book. He copies it out. Time taken: five minutes...if you don't count the wriggling...

Here's the sentence.

He saw a plump grey rabbit scamper across the clearing as a blue jay scolded from the oak tree.

~

On Tuesday I ask Yoshi to look through his copywork of the day before, paying particular attention to any words that look tricky. He decides to practice spelling 'scamper' and 'clearing', complete with cute plump rabbit sketch.

Then I ask him to take a look at the same sentence typed up incorrectly, like this:

he sor a pump grey rabit scamp acros the cleering as a blu jay scoded from the ok tre

 and to correct the errors. Bravewriter  calls this 'reverse dictation.' He picks up and corrects all the errors.

Later I read out recipes from the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. Wednesday is a poetry tea time and it looks like we'll be having sugar cookies and Mrs Weasley's Hot Chocolate to accompany our rhymes.
Time taken: 15 minutes all up.

~

On Wednesday morning I realise we won't have time for our poetry tea. The day is set aside for taking one very small boy to the Botanic Gardens to look at ducks and learn how to kick through a pile of autumn leaves. At day's end we manage to squeeze in the cookies and hot chocolate in...priorities...a more prepared mama ( and aunty ) would have packed a poetry book to read in the Gardens!

~

On Thursday we look at the sentence again and talk about personification. Can blue jays scold ? No. They might sound as if they are scolding, but that is us giving the birds a human characteristic. I ask Yoshi to come up with three examples of personification.

The rocket jumped up.

The earth ran around the sun.

The stone looked bored just sitting there.

Time taken: 10 minutes.

~

It's Friday and that means writing project day. We're working on the first Partnership Project - codes! We skip the invisible code - we've done that before - and go straight on to the Pigpen code. I tell Yoshi there's something in it for him if he decodes my message and replies to me in code.

You can pick dessert tonight.

I want a chocolate cake and stuff to decorate it please.

Gotta love a kid who's polite, even in code!

I read Yoshi Michael Rosen's Chocolate Cake poem, which he declares 'lame'. The plot - child starts eating cake, can't stop, suddenly there's none left - is predictable, apparently. Ah well. At least he could justify his comment.

Codes and cake are fun, so this took us around 30 minutes all together, if you don't include the cake making, baking and decorating. I'm pretty sure this much sugar is optional when it comes to Partnership Writing!