Sometimes the most difficult part of keeping a journal is knowing where to start. I’m going to make it easy for you….I’ll be giving you prompts and topics every day and you can tailor them to your own style. Spend 5 minutes or spend an hour. It’s up to you.
I love to map things out….it’s a great way of documenting memories without having to write out paragraph after paragraph. If I have to go to the DMV or doctor’s office, I take my journal along…..and I start to enjoy the wait.
Sometimes memories are happy….. and sometimes they are painful. By creating a map, you can document things from the surface…..and revisit them later when you feel ready to tell the story.
Creative writing comes from the details……so let’s dig in and see what we remember…….
Maybe you remember very little…..just jot down or sketch anything. What did the chairs look like? What did your teacher look like? What did the cafeteria look like? Did you ride the bus? Was there a bully in your class? Etc. Open an old album and see if any photos jog a memory. Maybe reach out to a friend from grade school and see what they remember. It’s a process…..you can always come back to this page later.
I DO miss Michael Landon as much as you do! We love to watch those episodes. “Harvest of Friends”, “Richest Man in Walnut Grove”, “Christmas at Plum Creek” and “Bunny” are some of our favorites. I don’t know what gets into them sometimes but you are doing the exact same thing I would do in the situation of entitlement and back talk. Take away toys and TV and make them earn time for both with good deeds. Good for you, stick to your guns! I also like to throw in an episode or two of Super Nanny to give me some tips on how to handle things when I’m having trouble with one of mine.
Harvest of Friends, Richest Man in Walnut Grove and Christmas at Plum Creek were my favorites too. Good memories
My kids were born in the mid 70’s. Even back then taking away toys & TV was considered ‘cruel & unusual’ punishment. I said, too bad, and did it anyway. Has it made them better parents – unfortunately not because their wives seem to believe their kids deserve everything they want and how could they take it away from them – it will harm their self-esteem and make thm feel unworthy. And being disrespectful? I’m not sure they think there is such a thing. As much as I miss seeing my grandkids (we live 1200 miles away) I don’t think I could stand the attitude of my DILs and even my sons’.
We, adults & kids, do not deserve & are not entitled, to every new gadget, toy, or piece of clothing that comes out. However, every one of us deserves and is entitled to respect and I find that lacking among many.
Your parenting will go a long way in serving Boo well – congrats.
And, I miss Michael Landon and many of the shows from that time – we can all learn many lessons from them.
I miss Michael Landon. My three favorite tv shows are Walton, Little House and Anne of Green Gables. I grew up watching them and my kids grew up watching reruns. I plan to have my grandkids watch them with me.
Romney did write that and who cares which political party writes the truth. It’s still the truth. Thanks for sharing your post today. Great lessons for parents.
OK … so because you’ve taught me so much already, I decided to (Reluctantly I have to admit) start this journaling project. It is something I’ve thought of doing forever and you gave me the jump start. I started today thinking I couldn’t remember a thing about that long ago, so I started with a large square on my page. I remembered the door, then the windows, then Mrs. Hyslop’s desk, and so it went and before I knew it, I had it all down! I still can’t believe it … I haven’t remembered something from when I was that young in a long time … and I’m only 35! Thank you Ashley, I’m looking forward to the rest of this journey.
That’s exactly how I started remembering everything! I started with a square…!
Okay, I can’t believe how much fun I had drawing my kindergarten classroom. SO funny – all these dumb little memories kept coming back to me – “Oh, here’s where the chart was where the teacher measured us to track growth! That was the only time in my life when I was tall!”
Really fun exercise – thank you for this. And for taking my mind off the part where my girl is starting Grade 1 today and despite the fact that I’ve kind of wanted to string her up by her ankles for the last few weeks (something in the water I’m thinking?? Because OH YES with the attitude and the entitlement), I miss her pretty desperately today.
Hope you are well!
xo
Christy.
Ashley, thank you for the inspiration to start this new journal project.
Hi Ashley, I am LOVING this journal project. I have a couple different journals that I keep for various moods and this one so far is the most exciting! Today’s entry was so fun, considering my oldest just started kindergarten last week and I drew up in surprising detail my own kindergarten classroom from 1987-88. Thank you for this!
I just finished today’s journal and uploaded the image – it was kind of weird to “travel back” to my elementary school’s classroom. Weirdly enough, I mostly recall colors and emotions which popped up while I was drawing. The floor plan itself isn’t very detailed.
Michael Landon was one of my childhood heroes, I loved the series “Ein Engel auf Erden” (Wikipedia told me that the original name is “Highway to Heaven” – the German title would translate to “An Angel on Earth”). Aaaw, I miss those shows <3
As for Romney – is it possible that his speech was a rip-off? I bookmarked this a while ago:
Greetings from Germany! Can't wait for tomorrow's prompt 😀
Anke
In about 30 minutes I captured my first grade classroom from 51 years ago (we didn’t have kindergarten back then). I then proceeded to document an entire page with memories. Thank you for this prompt. It brought back many good memories. I look forward to more of this project.
help!!! how about first day anxiety??? or the nite before the first day of school anxiety??? hehehehe
Thanks Ashley, this is so generous of you to do! Thank you, thank you.
Sheila
Today’s Journal prompt brings back many good memories of my 1st classroom. It was my pre-school, “The Neighborhood House”. The reason I remember so vividly is because I had Acute Lymphosarcoma, Cancer of the Lymph glands. Though I was a very sick child, I have many memories of that Pre-School, good and bad. When I first got married, my hubby and I moved from NY to Ca. and my mom had given me a bunch of boxes full of stuff she had been saving for me over the years, decorations, linens, china, photos, etc. Amongst the many treasures in the boxes I found my pre-school class photo. My hubby then proceeded to ask me how I got a picture of his pre-school picture. As it turns out, my husband and I were in the same pre-school class. So we both had mentioned this irony to our parents and we then discovered that my hubby would protect me from the taunting from the other kids because of my bald head which resulted from the Chemotherapy. True story. I am so enjoying this journal project. Thanks for the fun.
That’s incredible! I love stories like this! Thank you for sharing! 🙂
Our room was very symmetrical and paste was plentiful! It was Mrs. Ferguson (fascinating now we call our teachers Ms. & their first name) Ryan gave me a cracker jack box ring and we got married…
Can I ask a basic journaling question? Do most of you use both sides of paper, or only the right side? Does your ink bleed through to the other side? I am probably the only one who wonders what page I should write on every time I turn a page.
Personally, I write on both sides… But it’s reallly whatever you’re comfortable with doing! (My ink does not bleed through to the other side, bi I guess that depends on the pen and paper. . .)
Thank you for this proyect. I’ll try to follow you. My english is no good, but I’ll try .
From Spain,
Cristina
I wasn’t ‘in love’ with this topic when I first read it. But then I remembered that both my grandmothers left us journals and in it they described their tiny one room school houses. I loved reading it and I showed my little girl my drawing of my class and she loved it. Thanks for pushing me out of my comfort zone.
And to the girl who is worried about the ink bleeding through to the next page… I struggled with that too but then realized, we would be silly to think that one day doesn’t imprint on the next- both literally and figuratively.
Ooooh, I love love that thought! Thanks for sharing!
Ashley! This “task” made me soooooooo happy. A couple of days ago, my two very best friends and I, started an e-mail chain, writing about high shcool and all the wonderful things we used to do. They live in other country and is very dificult to us to communicate. We just remembered how, every morning I used to take two big green apples to school, telling mom they were to eat, for lunch. What she didn’t know is that we used to attend to a self-organized “BIGGEST-BITE” Contest. That was the reason for my big apples. The place of the contest is been drawn already, in my new journal..
Thank you so much. This project is amazing!
This year I have started homeschooling 2 of my school age kids and had been struggling with journaling. This looked like such a fun project it has become part of our schooling and a family project. Thank you for the ideas otherwise we would all have blank pages.