There is so much more to write about in the summer!
Writing in a journal is wonderful in the summer because there is often so much more to write about! Swimming, vacations, gardening, the county fair, church picnics, camping . . . all these topics give my children plenty of writing ideas for their daily journal entries. In the summer, when other schoolwork isn’t demanding, a chance to write is a nice interlude. I like to use the quiet time after lunch, when the littlest children take their naps, as a daily journal writing time for the other children (and myself). If your children have a full and busy summer schedule, this natural break in the day is restful and refreshing.
For kindergarten students, just a sentence or two on wide (5/8”) lined paper is sufficient. If your child has difficulty forming the letters correctly, you can write his sentence in yellow marker so that he can trace over the letters in a easy-to-hold fat pencil. If he can form his letters correctly most of the time, then just print his dictated sentence on scratch paper for him to copy onto his journal page.
As children develop, they will be gradually advance to creating their own sentences without your help in letter formation or spelling. I provide a spelling dictionary so my children can look up words on their own and thus be independent in writing their own journal entries by 6 or 7 years old. A spelling dictionary is simply a small booklet arranged alphabetically with a short list of words most commonly used by beginning writers. There is also room for your student to add other words he uses frequently. This tool can really help a young writer become quite self-reliant. You will always need to go back and help your child correct errors to make journal writing a good learning experience, but as they grow, those errors get less and less frequent. My older children use pencil or erasable pen to write their entries. Erasable pen makes them feel grown up but still allows for mistakes to be corrected.
The lines on the paper are important. Start a 4–5-year-old on early handwriting paper that has 5/8” high spaces and a dotted half-line. By the time your child is 6 years old, he will be able to write on 5/8” without the dotted half-line. A 7-year-old can write on 1/2” lines. Around 8 years, your child will begin to write cursive rather than print his journal entry. By 10 years old, he can use standard 3/8” wide rule notebook paper. If you want to preserve your children’s writing for years to come, do not choose newsprint writing paper that will yellow and disintegrate before they reach adulthood.
I like to use paper that is blank on the top half of the page for my children under 10 years old, as they enjoy illustrating their writing every day. Older children can write on lined paper and insert blank pages for drawing whenever they want to. We keep our pages in 3-ring binders. I like my children to remove the page that they are writing on because they have better penmanship when they are not struggling to position their hand around the rings in the binder.
To preserve your summer journal, make the covers on cardstock, illustrating and often add their photo on the front cover. Then I take their journal to the print shop and have them bound with a comb or plastic spiral binding, which only costs a few dollars. I put a plastic sheet over the front cover before it is bound if there is a photo there. This makes a very nice book that the children love to show their grandparents when they come.
Even if you do no other schoolwork this summer, do keep those daily journal entries coming. It gives children a regular chance to express themselves, it sharpens and maintains their penmanship skills, it provides a record of their summer adventures, and it exercises their English, grammar and spelling! A wonderful daily habit!
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