April 2004

Since January when I wrote this she has continued to pursue this interest with passion.

She decided to learn more about divination and fortune-telling and was ecstatic when I came back from the library with an armful of books on the topic. She really enjoyed reading "Five Ways to Know About You" and "The Dream Book" so I bought her her own copies of those but she still doesn't want to return the pile of library books. For her recent birthday I found "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Divination" and a mini book on meditation, another of her recent interests.

And through her reading of the Magical Worlds of Harry Potter she kept coming across Latin-based words and asking about them. So a few weeks ago I picked up the Oxford Latin-English mini-dictionary from the library for her. Well it's her most favourite book right now! Sometimes she'll come down and tell me about words or names she has found. And we've had a couple of quick conversations about how dictionaries are structured. She got her own Latin-English dictionary for her birthday as well.

Also a few weeks ago she began writing her own Harry Potter story. One evening her older brother dropped by her room and when he found out what she was up to he showed her a fan fiction site on the internet (he goes there to read fan fiction based on his favourite video games). She stayed up that night reading Harry Potter fan fiction (her first all-nighter!) Last I heard her story has 18 chapters (they are short she says), and I just found out that she has started 5 different stories. And the family knows that if she's not in her room reading, she can most likely be found in her room writing! <grin>

Once in a while though she does come down to hang with us. Last night she came downstairs and joined myself and her younger brother for a video game - Mario Party 4. When we played the book mini-game she mentioned how much she like it and her brother told her "you're a bookworm!" She agreed with a big smile and a laugh.

July 2004

She has continued reading and writing Harry Potter fan fiction with a passion.  Her main story is now well over 30,000 words and this afternoon we are going to figure out how to post the first chapter on a fan fiction site!  She's excited about that.  She's also started an original story called Death Falls ... she "published" her first excerpt from this story in her grandmother's 60th birthday memory book.

Oh, and she created her own Harry Potter fan website!  She spent almost two days straight (other than sleep) working on it and I think it looks great.

She has also recently read her first "adult" novel: Can You Keep A Secret by Sophie Kinsella.  She read it in less than three days and really enjoyed it!  I've picked her up another couple of books by the same author.

And she has also continued with her interest in all aspects of fortune-telling!  She regularly hunts through our library looking for promising books ... planets, astronomy, the zodiac, homeopathy & plants and so on.  And I've picked her up a couple of divination books I've come across.  She made herself a large board for divining with dice etc.

Tons of inseparable fun and learning!

April 2006

So I'm updating all the pages on the site to the new format and thought I'd post a bit more on this topic.

Reading now just flows through her everyday life naturally. She has now read many books, websites, and magazines, even the original I Can Read article! Collecting books is a great interest of hers - wandering through a bookstore is definitely her idea of fun. We had such a fun time together at the most recent Scholastic warehouse sale!

I am so happy that we found unschooling before her loss of self-esteem was unrecoverable in the school atmosphere where reading early is the key to success.