Unschooling Vignette: Cursive

My daughter has been sick. Not terribly sick, just unwell enough to not feel a lot of motivation to see friends or play with her stuffed animals. She wants to cuddle a lot and do art. Mostly on her whiteboard, so that she can both cuddle and do art at the same time.

Today, as I was bitching about politics on Facebook, she sat next to me and drew a spotted wolf, his face raised to the moon, howling. The moon had a happy, benevolent face. The wolf sat on Mother Earth, in a long, flowing black dress (she only had a black marker), and star-friends looked down lovingly on the whole scene.

She asked me, "How do you write my name in cursive." So I showed her… and over the next hour, she practiced and practiced her signature after the cursive alphabet I carefully wrote for her on the board. Word after word. This is the first time she's ever mentioned cursive to me, other than handing me hand-written notes from her grandparents and saying, "I can't read this." This is how learning happens. In the sick moments on the couch, snuggled under covers, drawing and erasing, and drawing over again…creating questions, answering them, and then asking new ones.

​We are now on to "how to draw anime eyes."