441 | Little Letters from the Heart: First Steps in Writing (Janice Campbell)
Show Notes:
Writing can seem as natural as speaking to a child who grows up around adults who write lists, notes, and letters. Join me as I share a few thoughts about special childhood notes and letters I've written and received, and why those little notes can count as first steps in writing.
About Janice
Janice Campbell, a lifelong reader and writer, loves to introduce students to great books and beautiful writing. She holds an English degree from Mary Baldwin College, and is the graduated homeschool mom of four sons. You’ll find more about reading, writing, planning, and education from a Charlotte Mason/Classical perspective at her websites, EverydayEducation.com, Excellence-in-Literature.com, and DoingWhatMatters.com.
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Show Transcript:
Janice Campbell Hello and welcome to The Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Janice Campbell and I'm one of the many hosts here on the podcast. Each week we bring you an encouraging conversation from this busy and blessed journey of educating our children at home. While the title of the show is Homeschool Solutions, we don't pretend to have all the answers to all the homeschooling questions. It is our hope that this podcast will point you to Jesus Christ that you may seek his counsel as you train your children in the way they should go. Parents, here's a riddle for you: Homeschoolers love them, enemies of freedom hate them. What are they? It's the Tuttle Twin books. With millions of copies sold, the Tuttle Twins series helps you teach your children about entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, the Golden Rule, and so much more. Get a discounted set of books with free workbooks today at TuttleTwins.com/homeschool. And now on today's show.
Hi, this is Janice Campbell. Thank you for joining me today. I've been thinking about first steps in writing and I mean the really simple ones. I remember one summer when we returned from a GHC conference trip to find a pair of notes on our kitchen counter. On one, big wobbly capital letters sprawled all the way across the page asking, "Granddaddy, do you have any fishing line?" On another sheet was a colorful drawing topped by "Welcome Back! I Love You, Grammy." These sweet notes from our four and six year old grandchildren reminded me of the notes I wrote as a child. I tucked slips of paper with little messages all over the house for my grandparents to find. When my grandfather passed away, there was one of my little "I love you daddy" notes from nearly 40 years earlier. It was faded and worn but it was tucked into his wallet and he had clearly carried it all those years.
As I looked at our grandchildren's messages and remembered my own little notes, I was reminded how simple the start to writing can be and what a big role written communication has played in my life. My grandparents wrote daily, so I learned to do it too. What they wrote was practical and it had immediate visible meaning, so it was clear to me that writing was something interesting and important to learn. My grandmother wrote grocery lists, recipes, letters to family and friends, journal entries, budgets, trip plans, birthdays on the calendar, and, of course, chore lists. My grandfather wrote Bible studies, meticulous marginal notes, garden plans, and an occasional poem or letter. For many years, I'd awake to find one of his little notes on the kitchen table with a scripture question for me. Those questions began with the simple who, what, where, and when type of queries when I was young, but as I grew older, they increased in complexity and depth. I'd research the answer and write it on the little card, prop the note back on the table for him to find when he came home from work. It was a game we played for many years and I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot too.
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But because I was surrounded by writing, it seemed natural for me to write notes even before I learned to read. I had to ask how to spell everything. Letters were often awkward or reversed, but I was so determined to join the family conversation, I persevered. I would ask my grandmother to help me spell things, and she did, and my early notes were brief, but as I learned to read and write, they grew longer. I wrote to aunts and cousins and other relatives, I got pen pals, I had a penpal in Japan and pen pals in other states, and I even wrote to my friends at church and school. During my middle school years, it wasn't unusual to write and receive 4 to 6 page daily letters from friends that I saw every day. Writing allowed us to continue conversations and pursue interesting ideas between math problems and Spanish conjugations. Letters even provided a way to work through disagreements and offer heartfelt apologies. By the time my friends and I entered high school, we had written hundreds of pages, far more than we'd been required to write for any of our classes. Writing had become a familiar art, and although our letters were informal, they helped us learn to communicate. Our grandchildren have learned that writing is for communication, too.
Writing isn't just something that has to be done for school. It's a way to ask for important things, communicate love, record ideas. Beginning in the preschool years, children can write notes and stories, draw cards, even write and illustrate little how to booklets. And of course, they composed birthday lists and so much more. Big wobbly printing and backwards letters didn't diminish my grandparents' joy in my notes, and nor do those things diminish our joy in the little notes from our grandchildren. Every note was progress on the road to writing fluently and to communicating well, but because the writing was spontaneous and voluntary, we never critiqued or corrected it. And we didn't critique or correct our sons when they were writing these spontaneous little notes, especially in the preschool years. The critique would be a way of cutting off communication with your dear children. So when kids see adults writing to communicate, they tend to want to try it too. Helping them do so takes time, but nurturing their desire to communicate and just helping them write whatever they want to write can help to keep the desire alive, so that when the time for formal lessons arrives, they'll still associate writing with communication and hopefully with fun.
These little letters from the heart bring joy in the writing and joy in the reading. And when they show up decades after they're written, tucked in the pages of books, or cherished in a jewelry box, they bring joy once more. If you have been lucky enough to receive a note with big, wobbly penmanship and perhaps some quirky spelling, tuck it into a book somewhere. I think that one day you'll be glad you kept it. Thank you for listening and I wish you joy in the journey.
Thank you for joining us this week on The Homeschool Solutions Show. You can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at Homeschooling.mom. Don't forget to check out my friends at Medi-Share because you deserve health care you can trust. To learn more about Medi-Share and why over 400,000 Christians have made the switch, go to GreatHomeschoolConventions.com/MediShare. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and while you're there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show. This will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected to our community. And finally, tag us on Instagram @HomeschoolingDotMom to let us know what you thought of today's episode. Have you joined us at one of The Great Homeschool Conventions? The Great Homeschool Conventions are the homeschooling events of the year, offering outstanding speakers, hundreds of workshops covering today's top parenting and homeschooling topics, and the largest homeschool curriculum exhibit halls in the US. Find out more at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com. I hope to see you there. Finally you can connect with me, Janice Campbell, at EverydayEducation.com where you'll find my Excellence in Literature curriculum, Transcripts Made Easy, and more, as well as at my blog DoingWhatMatters.com and my literature resource site Excellence-In-Literature.com. I wish you peace and joy in your homeschooling.
