Journal Writing: The Heart and Hub of Your Worldschooling

 

Time and space, reflect and record, screen-free moment. All of these words can describe the experience of journal writing for worldschooling. Journaling time during your Wonder Year can be an important and grounding activity, a time to pause and reflect without screens or other distractions.

There are many ways to keep a journal–here’s how we did ours. We bought small, light-weight journals before we left. There was nothing on the cover so we could draw our own. Our first entries chronicled our hopes and dreams, our excitement and fears. I then scoured the internet, and personal books, for prompts. Journal writing for worldschooling was great for parent and child alike.

As we went along, I kept the journals in a ziploc so they’d stay safe and dry. The bag also held colored pencils, small TSA-approved scissors, and a glue stick. There was also a well-worn sheet of those prompts, printed double-sided in 10 point font. We set aside time to journal together as often as we could. Sometimes this happened while waiting for food, during a train ride or as wind-down time at the end of a busy day.

My youngest was seven when we left, not an age when he felt comfortable writing for a long time. As the year went along, his stamina improved. Sometimes he told me what he wanted to write and I recorded it for him. Sometimes he would draw a picture from the day and give it a subtitle. Other times, he made a collage of ticket stubs, postcards or brochures with scissors and glue. Some families use speech-to-text, dictation or other assistive technology to help kids who may struggle to write but have memories to capture through words.

Often, I would prompt my kids with, “what would your classmates find interesting about today?” The next time we did schooling, they would take those notes and turn it into a postcard. The journaling would then be more of a pre-writing or brainstorming activity. 

We often associate writing instruction with “learning how to write.” But writing is also used to process and think critically. In this way, we can think about journaling as “writing to learn.” That freedom to explore your thoughts and write anything in a journal is a powerful tool. The permission to play with thoughts comes when it’s not a graded assignment, but rather a private container to shape thinking into words. 

The most extraordinary journaling sessions happened when my husband and I journaled side-by-side with our kids. 

When journals were full, we sent them home and bought more at a local shop. Sometimes we wanted lines, sometimes we didn’t. My kids chose the covers, the weight, the size. The collection of full journals became part of our story.  

As returned worldschoolers, our recorded moments in time are gifts. It may seem like a chore to create the space for journaling in your day-to-day life on the road, but think about having your journals for years to come. Think about sitting down to read your words, evoking the magic of discovery and reliving the wonder.

Coming soon, prompts…