in praise of writing
by the Mama, who paints her pictures with words
Xi’an, China
It’s a rare day that goes by without any journalling. In fact, it might even be accurate to say we have journalled Every Single Day so far.
And it’s been interesting to watch the progression of the journals. I had visions of learning to draw and use watercolours to good effect this year in my own journal. I think my first one has two (poor) pictures and none of the next three have any. My watercolour use has been limited to holding the palette for the smallest family members – perhaps most memorably on the slow boat on the Mekong river to make the second nine hour day in a row seem a wee bit shorter. At least that was successful!
The children, on the other hand, have gone from writing just a few sentences to churning out pages and pages, often illustrated. With watercolours even.
Their journals are a pleasure to behold!
It’s nice to see individual personalities coming through in their writing, and to see the older four trying out different “voices” and techniques. Good, also, to see younger ones using letters independently.
Jgirl14’s pages are filled with colour or black and white line drawings and calligraphic descriptions, instructions and accounts.
Jboy13’s is the one to look up if you want to know how long any activity lasted, the duration of any train trip, the weather or dimensions of any structure visited.
Jboy11 started out with a barely legible script and has developed a very-pleasing-to-the-eye style, both in terms of letter formation and the prose itself….not to mention some cool illustrations:
Kgirl10 cottons on to a new stylistic technique and makes sure she masters it in the next seven entries 😉 Her repertoire has fast expanded from, “We did this and then we did that” to “We have arrived at Disneyland. Finally! The day I have been waiting for. We exited the MTR station and entered Disneyland. I suddenly got butterflies in my stomach….”
Lboy8 labours over his writing day by day. He does not find it easy, but insists on doing it all himself. He almost always illustrates his memory; that’s his ox cart you can see up in the top picture.
Mboy6 has an eclectic mixture of his own drawings, traced-over-Dadda’s-sketches and descriptions dictated to someone, anyone who happens to be around. He has started dating all pictures, with most of his numerals sitting backwards. You’ll find a lot of maps and animals inside his pages.
Tgirl4’s journal records grand milestones – on a page with two lines are the dictated words, “I was using chopsticks today and realised I can do it now!” It also captures little details others of us might miss – accompanying a fairly authentic-looking picture of a Phnom Penh cockle cart is another dictated description, “The cockle lady pushes her cart up the street every afternoon. She calls out and we copy her. People come out of their houses to buy a tinful of cockles.” And at the base of the cart are dots, hundreds of them. The explanation? “People drop their shells on the ground when they have finished eating.” Her journal also has Mama-written entries, such as this one from Luang Prabang, Laos:
Whenever you see a baby- and there are plenty of them – you declare, “Mama, dick noi” This brings a huge smile to the faces of the Lao folk who hear you….invariably they then say, “Falang noi…….pa-sa-lao….dick noi”
(something about the little foreigner speaking the Lao language, did you hear her say dick noi – little baby”)
Tonight you said a whole Lao sentence, “Dick noi non”. The baby is asleep.
ERgirl2 has recently started asking to do her own journal. She really cannot manage anything more than a scribble and so I am afraid to say I am guilty of saying, “Sure Honey” and handing her scrap paper. I continue to fill her journal with special little stories particular to her experience of the trip. She’ll thank me one day 😉 (or not)
And so our journals capture special moments.
Tags: book, children, craft, learning, postcard: China
rayres
Inspirational, guys! Well done.
awesome stuff.
These journals are beautiful, and it’s a lovely idea to write journals for the little ones too. They will treasure them when they are older. Best wishes
What a fantastic source of memories for the kids. I wish I had written journals like these on all the trips I went on when I was younger.