Recently I uncovered a stash of old exercise books from my youth. When I was in Prep my family and I travelled around Europe for three months in a campervan. During this time (no doubt due to the sheer boredom of rattling around in the back of the van for hours at a stretch), I taught myself to read and write. I filled many exercise books with noughts and crosses, word searches, hangman, lists, equations, and many of my very first short stories (almost all of which were illustrated).
Here are two of the stories I wrote when I was six. I have had to finish the first one (in italics) as it was incomplete.
JELLY
One summer morning Mr Jelly Wobble got out of bed and wobbled himself down the steps and had breakfast he had for breakfast a place of biscuits and a cup of coffee then he wobbled himself out the door then went to the club where he wobbled and wobbled and then he had more biscuits
THE STORY OF THE MAGIC PENCIL
there was a boy called Andrew. he was six years old. One day he asked his mother can go to the pencil shop and get some pencils there yes said his mother so he quickly ran down to the pencil shop carrying a large tin of pencils. but one of them was not a pencil. But it was a magic pencil. The end.
This is admittedly a bit of an abrupt ending. If I was going to re-write it I would go for something like:
The magic pencil could draw the future and anything it drew even spaceships and ice-cream came true. The end
I'm really impressed by your impeccable spelling. My mum sometimes brings home some of her kids' stories to mark (and for me to read in delight) and even the best ones always have spelling mistakes. These are grade two kids, too.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mel, great spelling. I love the details that kids add to stories that they think are important and the details they leave out. Like how Andrew was six years old but yet doesn't elaborate on why he was taking his pencils to the pencil shop and what was so magical about the pencil. Was he going to sell the pencils?
ReplyDeleteI love Mr Jelly Wobble. You get a real sense he wobbles and like biscuits. I can relate to that.
Leanne, do you have any journals from when you were a teenager? I would pay money to read those entries on this blog.)
My spelling was good (and thankfully has remained good), but my punctuation wasn't so great!
ReplyDeleteRe: details, I wonder why Mr Jelly Wobble had coffee for breakfast, given I had never even tasted coffee at that stage.
I did keep journals as a teen, almost solidly through my high school years. Unfortunately in a fit of denial and embarassment and shame, I destroyed most of them, I think in the last year of high school. They were full of morbid thoughts and bad poetry.