Parallel reading

Do you remember when your sixth grader was younger? Do you remember play dates where the little children didn’t actually play with each other but near each other? It is called parallel play and is a stage that children go through.

Well, I would like to suggest another form of parallel play for your sixth grade homeschool student. It will be parallel reading, and it has been a lot of fun at our house.

Here is how it works for us. My daughter will pick a book she wants to read, usually it is a young adult fantasy novel or books by homeschoolers. She reads it, and at the same time, we read it. Sometimes it is on the family e-reader, sometimes it is an actual physical book, but there is only one copy for the three of us to share. We each have a different book mark, and it is strictly against the rules to move or lose another person’s book mark.

What good is this parallel reading, you might ask. Well, for one thing, I know for a fact that whatever she is reading is appropriate. I know if there are issues that might be disturbing to her that need discussion. Another thing it does is that it allows us to have common interests and knowledge. We can discuss story points, or literary devices that the author uses. It is another way for us to stay in contact with our increasingly independent child, and it is a good thing!

Journaling

Journaling can be useful to your sixth grader in so many ways. And there is not a right way or a wrong way to do it. It can be as individual as each person who does it. That being said, what is journaling?

Well, it is a way of recording information, thoughts, and feelings in writing. My daughter is a reluctant writer, and we have failed in the past to get her to write down anything on a consistent basis. She loves to draw, however, and she has several sketch books a year full of drawings she made. If you look at the oldest ones, her drawings were very childlike, simple, and unsteady. Her newest ones show detailed anatomical drawings of different forms of dragons, and a significant improvement in her ability to successfully draw the legs and heads of horses.

Is her art work really journaling? For a non-writer I would say yes. The good news is sometime in the last couple of months my daughter has begun to keep a written journal, using words instead of pictures. I have seen an improvement in all of her written expression in those few months.

Writing in her journal has helped not only her writing skills, but also gives her a place to express her deepest feelings, fears, and joys. It gives her a private place to say the things that are in her head, where no one will read them, or judge them. I’m even thinking of scheduling journaling time in our day. Sometimes even I have things in my head that need to be written but not read by anyone else.