Writing Sample

This morning Hazel slept in late. When she woke up she refused to do anything until she wrote down the story in her head. I wanted to hurry her along but it's hard to discourage a 5-year-old from spontaneous creative writing, so I told her she could write while she ate her breakfast.Luckily she read it to me so I can translate:

Once upon a time there was a prince and he was looking for a princess to marry. The queen suggested at the castle next door so he went there but they did not have a child. So then the king suggested the castle on the other side and when he got there he saw a princess and they got married. The end

They've been working on simple narrative structure - beginning, middle, end - at school. She wanted to take it to school to read to her class but forgot it, so I scanned it before it got lost. Here are just a few things I love about this sample: creative phonetic spelling, mixed upper/lowercase and sometimes backwards letters, straight-ish lines, inclusion of basic fairy tale elements without any pesky details.

Here's a picture I took of her on the way to school today. It just makes me happy: