The write start - Jennifer Hallissy 2010
A Place of One’s Own
The Write Stuff
As we learned from the movie Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. I assure you that this rule can apply in your home as well. If you make a place for it, they will write.
Devoting an area in your home to writing sends a message to your child. It says that writing is so important that it deserves its own special spot. It doesn’t have to be an entire room of one’s own, as writer Virginia Woolf described, just a dedicated area for organizing writing tools and supplies. Young writers will gravitate toward this spot to collect their materials and gather their thoughts. And they will know exactly where to find their latest work in progress when inspiration strikes.
FYI: Make Your Mark
Don’t forget these other ingenious ideas:
✵ Tub crayons on bathtub walls
✵ Fabric markers on T-shirts
✵ Body crayons for messages on . . . you!
✵ Food markers for writing on your sandwich
✵ Magnetic letters on fridges, washers and dryers, little red wagons
✵ Window crayons on windows, glass doors, and mirrors
✵ Sidewalk chalk on the sidewalk, front steps, or a stone wall
My father built my first desk. I remember it clearly—it was blue with a pegboard back. And although it was kid-sized, it wasn’t flimsy in the least. It was built like a battleship, which made me feel very important, as if he expected I would spend many hours there and that my work would be something to be reckoned with, a force of nature.
Carving out a little spot in your home for your young writers is more than just a way of saying, “Put your pencils here.” It also communicates that you value their ideas. It’s a promise to our kids that we are confident that the day will come when they will need to sit down and plot their course, draft their dreams, write their own story. Hey, childhood is the time to make big plans, you know? Creating a thoughtful corner for them to write it all down encourages them to find their own voices and to begin to carve out their own little niches in the world.
Desk and Chair
Remember Goldilocks? After eating up all that porridge, she felt a little tired and decided it would be a good idea to sit down. She passed up the first chair she tried (too hard), and turned her nose up at the second (too soft), but was pleased as punch with the third (just right). A girl after my own heart.
As parents, our most important job is to set our children up for success. And when it comes to writing, it is essential that we seat them for success as well. Like Goldilocks, our kids need the just-right chair in which to write. Not merely for comfort, the “just write” chair provides the best possible base of support.
The “just write” chair should help your child achieve the optimal posture for doing seated work at a table. How do you judge your child’s posture? Look for three ninety-degree angles: a ninety-degree angle at the ankles with their feet flat on the floor, a ninety-degree angle at the knees; and a ninety-degree angle at the hips when your child’s back is flat against the back of the chair.
What’s the big deal? Well, think about writing in a moving vehicle. Have you ever tried it? First of all, it’s quite challenging. Second of all, even if you do manage to accomplish the task, the end product is, let’s just say, less than stellar. Without a stable base of support, it’s nearly impossible to adequately control the movement of your hands. In other words, as I tell kids: when your body is wiggly, your writing will be wiggly too.
Everybody feels more stable and comfortable with their feet on the floor. It is terribly unsettling, not to mention uncomfortable, to sit in a too-big chair with your feet dangling in the air.
If children sit in oversized chairs, their instinct is to gain stability by sliding their hips forward and stretching out their legs so their feet touch the floor. This leads to a slouched posture. It also “locks” up their shoulders since they tend to push their upper bodies into the back of the chair in order to stay in the seat.
On the other hand, chairs that are too small for a child create their own problems. Children sitting in undersized chairs will find their knees up too high, making it difficult to get close enough to the table.
Once you find a chair that fits your child, take a look at the desk height. The rule of thumb is that a table should be approximately two inches higher than a child’s bent elbow (when seated).
If a table is too low, children will have to slouch over to get their elbows near the table for support. When a table is too high, children raise their elbows and put them onto the table for support. (Hence the age-old “get your elbows off the table” complaint. Too bad generations of parents didn’t realize their elbow-propping kids were just compensating for their small size in relation to a big table!)
Shelves, Drawers, and Cubbies
Writing is a process of self-discovery. It is the act of taking the thoughts stored in the recesses of your mind, sorting them out, and putting them on the page. Through writing, children find themselves. But before they can even get started, they first have to be able to find their stuff!
Believe it or not, there is a direct link between being able to access the ideas tucked away in your mind and being able to access your writing tools and materials. Since writing’s inception, I wonder how many brilliant ideas have been lost forever whilst someone was rifling around for a stylus and a piece of papyrus (pencil and paper to you and me).
No matter how inspired an idea, it’s not real until you write it down. Making sure young writers have the raw materials of their craft within reach is a surefire way to help them reach their learning potential. In other words, when the right writing tools are at a child’s fingertips, learning will be well within their grasp.
That’s where accessible storage comes in. Now we’re not talking about storing anything major here. Say a jar of pencils, a tray of paper, a notepad, and a pencil sharpener for starters. These items should be kept at the ready beside your child’s favorite writing spot. Other accoutrements can be stowed away in drawers, in cubbies, or on a nearby shelf—to be doled out as needed.
Want to make sure that an “all set to write and not a pencil in sight” situation doesn’t happen in your home? Consider turning a spare cabinet into a writer’s pantry, and you’ll be sure to have all the essential ingredients for whatever writing project your kid cooks up.