Writing every day — a must. Still looking for ways to incorporate that feature into your homeschool? How about a Good Times Book? This is not a diary, nor a journal, but a collection of memorable times — rather like a summer memory jar, but a written record that covers the entire year.
If I had only kept a record of those brimfull, strenuous schooldays, what a well of laughter it would be to-day! I did acquire the habit later. For twenty years I’ve kept a journal, and for so many reasons found the course a good one, that I heartily commend it to every girl and boy who knows enough to use a pen. Not the conventional diary, however, which every one at some time in his life probably has attempted, starting out with grim determination to write a few lines every day, and soon discarding it as an intolerable bore.
Write only when you’ve something that you want to keep.
Now obviously, this is not a task to be done every day! It is only another option for a child looking for something to write. Is there something he might write in his Good Times Book?
The Little Colonel’s Good Time Book written by Annie F. Johnston (author of The Little Colonel series) can be used as a template for creating his own, or it can be printed out, bound, and used to record those special moments.
The author gives many examples and hints to follow:
One reason that so many diaries are thrown aside in the beginning, is that the writer patterns after those in fiction, and turns his inmost being wrong side out, to make a note of all his feelings. Now in the kind of diary I have in mind, feelings and self-analysis are as out of place as they would be on a play-ground. Any game would be a failure in which the players kept a finger on their pulses and stopped at intervals to take their temperature. The game of Life is no exception. You miss the goals you’re after when you stop to be self-conscious….
The kind that some day will be worth a fortune to you, is one kept simply in the squirrel-fashion of nut-gathering time. Once in a while, in the midst of care-free frisking, and eating your fill of the plump nuts on your particular tree, give a thought to the time of need that may be coming, and just drop a few into some hiding place for a winter store.
The Little Colonel’s Good Times Book is a free download in the public domain.
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