Andy has been hitting the writing hard lately. He wrote a whole paragraph, by himself, last week.
This may not seem like a huge thing when we are talking about a fifth grader. However, we are talking about a fifth grader with dysgraphia.
We learned a lot in the writing of that paragraph. It took the whole day to do it. We did the editing part the next day. This was just the writing part.
We learned that writing is absolutely exhausting for the Squirrel. He needs so many breaks to even get the words out there, that we lose the thoughts. He spent most of the time talking to me... and what he wrote was a pale shadow of a glimpse of all the ideas in there, but it was all he could manage.
We learned that he can be perfectly organized in his head, and the words come out almost at random onto the paper.
We learned that trying to come up with the words all by ourselves, instead of copywork after scribing, is what is exhausting. If we can copy the words, we do pretty well. If we are trying to think, organize, focus, sit, and get our fingers to comply all at the same time, we end up with a jumbled mess. And the handwriting is bad, too.
For those of you who know anything about my handwriting, you know how bad it had to be for me to say the handwriting was bad.
We learned we need to do something else, or writing is not happening. So we went out and bought a headset with a microphone. The project for the coming week? Write a paragraph. First, we are going to speak it- and see if we can get our first draft out into the computer a wee bit faster this time. Then we will focus our energy not on the getting the ideas out, but on the editing so others can enjoy those ideas, too.
Wish us luck.
