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>So as an unschooler, if your child comes to you with a story she's
>written, do you point out the spelling/grammar mistakes or not?
>Sheila
>
I wouldn't. unless she *asked* me to help her proofread. Think about it this
way. If you wrote a love sonnet, or song, or short story and proudly showed
it off to your best friend, and she pointed out all the mistakes you made,
how would you feel? Another way to think about it - dc spends quite a while
drawing a picture of the new baby elephant at the National Zoo, she puts her
heart and soul into this painting, adding colorful details such as the spots
on the baby's trunk, the bale of hay that the mother elephant eats, the
rubber ball that the keepers put in the pen for the baby to play with. She
skips over to her Daddy and shows him her beautiful drawing. He says "Very
nice dear, but an elephant doesn't have a long tail like a horse, and babies
don't have tusks yet, and grown up elephants don't eat hay. Why don't you do
this over with the corrections?" Does the dc joyously go back to the table
and do it over? I wouldn't think so.
Many years ago when my older brother was a teenager, he wrote a poem at
summer camp and sent it to our Grandpa. Gramps sent him back a letter that
enclosed the poem, in which he had highlighted all the spelling and
grammatical mistakes. My brother never again shared his writing with our
Gramps and still brings this hurt up today. (He is now 48). How sad.
Elissa