I Made a New Book. It’s Nonfiction

My daughter’s brailler broke a while back.   She said something but I didn’t think it was broken at the time.   It turns out she was right (I should have believed her), so we sent it in to school for a working one which arrived on Friday.

My daughter has been doing interesting drawing things for a while.   She’s writing in large print and making shapes that, once she tells you what they are, you can sort of see.   She’s coloring more in the lines than she used to as well.   She’s doing this all without any guidance on ideas too.   She has no coloring books or activity books that have mazes, connect the dots, things to color or search and find. She can’t see any of that—so she has to make up her fun.

She must have missed her braille machine though because on Friday I got home and my daughter had written a book.   It was six or seven pages with a few lines of braille at the top and then an illustration at the bottom.   And the only thing my husband did to help was staple it together when she was done.

She wrote the book in the same format as the books she’s reading that her braillest makes for her.   The first page has the page number at the top left, the title of the book on the next line, “By <author name>” on the third line and “Illustrated by <illustrator name>” on the fourth line.

My daughter does all of this, including the correct spellings with the exception of ‘illustrator’.   She says she prefers the word ‘illustrated’ instead and usually giggles when she tells you this.  She follows the same format for the remainder of the pages, putting the page number on each page and then writing a sentence or two with illustrations below.

Today she came to find me and said, “I made a new book.   It’s nonfiction.  Can you staple it for me?”   Aunt Rebecca and Olivia have been staying with us for a few days as Olivia is in a swim meet here.  The book was about Olivia swimming and winning the race.   And about how she won a medal.

She was indeed correct, it was a nonfiction story as Olivia did win a medal.   She even let my daughter wear it around her neck.

The Big Boy Update:  Speaking of reading and writing, my son has gone from struggling to read to being able to read entire books we wouldn’t expect him to have the skill to read yet.   Tonight while my daughter was helping me make his lunch for tomorrow he read, Action Movie Kid with help on only one word.   Last night he read, Dragons Love Tacos and impressed my mother and Aunt Martha who were watching them for the evening.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The children were upstairs reading books with my husband tonight as I was downstairs making my son’s lunch for tomorrow.  My daughter appeared at the bottom of the steps and asked if she could help because she’d already finished reading her book.   She was very helpful and actually cut the time it would have taken me to make the lunch alone.