Journal entry—orioles

Journal entry—waterfowl hike

After their waterfowl hike yesterday, Calvin came home and wrote about the experience in his journal. I still think we maybe need to make him a nature journal, but for now it's all in one.

This one, obviously, is completely unedited. When we first started the journal last fall I helped him sound out all words and get them spelled correctly. Over time he gained confidence and proficiency, and a desire to shrug off all outside interference, and a couple of months ago he started writing the entries on his own. When he finishes I usually read them out loud to him, in part to enjoy them together, now that I'm not part of the process anymore, and also to help him catch any glaring phonetic errors. My goal is not for him to spell everything correctly, but for him to have a good grasp, over time, on the general rules. This one I didn't read until today, and it is clear to me that he has made a lot of wonderful progress all on his own. It's hard to say which came first and encouraged the other, the reading or the writing, more they were simultaneous and co-dependent, but I am so happy about both his progress, and how it has happened—not with lessons, or practice sheets or even with many easy readers, but mostly just with practice and use. As my dad always says, nobody told him he couldn't read, and nobody implied that it was a difficult process that required systematic help, either, and so he just did it.

The Great Backyard Bird Count

The Great Backyard Bird Count took place this weekend. On any given day we have six or more bluebirds in our backyard. Sometimes we're lucky enough to get a junko or two as well, and godfinches are not uncommon, either. Our front yard is a popular hangout for neighborhood sparrows, a variety of finch species, grackles, bluejays, and sometimes even a cardinal or two.

Here are our misleading counts for the weekend, though:

Extremely high winds plagued us for the first two days, and heavy snowfall for the second two. At least we had a good time looking for them.