My 4-yr-old, the Author

I couldn't NOT document Gwen's latest intellectual development: story-crafting. The pics are just recent random photos of her, unrelated to the authoring moments.

 Gwen is periodically sent home with assignments from preschool that are really more for me than her, I imagine in the effort to get parents involved with the child's education. One such assignment was to choose a stuffed animal, have her make up a story about it while I wrote it down, and turn in her "story". Here is her creation, with my lack of punctuation intentional to indicate when she didn't slow down to breathe:

 "My pheasant is named Amy. *which she made up on the spot, btw, because she has NEVER called her pheasant Amy and usually says all her animals are named Gwen* One day Amy went to see her Mommy, Gwen. And after that she went to the woods and got lost. And then she went back to find her little baby pheasants. She had three little babies. One was named Sarah...and Percy and Bill. I have another story about when they were on the bus crying because they didn't get a drink. Their mommy got a drink for them and fed them then they went back home and then they went somewhere. Tomorrow we can do another story about my kitty."  

Cute. I love that babies and mommy's dominate the plot. I'm going to assume you are familiar with Owl Babies and caught her plagiarism--or literary allusion, if you are the generous type. :) The part at the end where she didn't pause reminds me of Kid History. :)

So her writing gets better. This next composition is awesome. Quite unexpectedly (it is a long story), my parents were here from midnight last night til 1:30 today. My dad took some time to play with Gwen this morning and she wrote another story. For this one, she included illustrations and page turns, which I've indicated by each new line:

"One day, on a boat, going to America. 
"Then in the morning, a nasty storm was coming by. 
"And the storm got bigger...and BIGGER...
"The rain was coming nearer and nearer.
"And the river got wild and wild.
"People fell from the boat, to mean shark's home.
"Sharks were eating people to their guts.
"Sharks got sick from eating the people.
"Their mommy and daddy gave them medicine."

and that is the end!

When I turned the page and read "eating people to their guts" I just couldn't stop laughing! How does she even KNOW about stuff like that? and I love how there is no tidy plot wrap up, the sharks just get medicine. Nuf said. Kids are so funny!