This month’s edition of my daughter’s e-zine, The Science Mouse, is posted, and her entry on the caecilians has to be my absolute favorite. Not that it is particularly well-written. OK, to be honest, it is rather poorly written, so I suppose some explanation may be in order.
We have been talking about the effective use of quotes in writing and I have been showing her different examples of how people use quotes. Sometimes it is to respond to someone else’s thoughts, and sometimes it is to use their words to express your own thoughts. Sometimes it lends additional credibility if the source is a reliable expert in the area being written about.
Now I just barely introduced this concept and haven’t gotten much past that. She, however, has been listening. . .and decided to apply her newfound knowledge. She scoured the internet looking for references to caecilians and posted an entry that included five quotes from five sources in just five paragraphs.
If one quote is good for your writing, five must be five times as good, right?
It is as exciting for me as watching the first few faltering steps of an infant striving to become a toddler.
If you would like to discover more about amphibians, all of the articles for this issue are linked in the lead entry, Welcome to the world of amphibians. You can also download the e-zine as a pdf from her site. And if your child is interested in writing for The Science Mouse, next month’s theme is on Canines, Wild and Domestic. Query through her contact form and she’ll let you know if she can use your article!
This is great! How fun. What an awesome way to encourage your children to write. I’m going to try to motivate mine. I printed off the PDF. Thanks!
Great! I hope you enjoy it and if they should get motivated, Mouse would love to publish their work!