Literacy Milestone: Transcribing Her First Song (+ Keeping a Diary)

My daughter, who will be five in just over a month, loves to make up songs. She's been doing this for a few months now, dancing around the house singing about birds or spring or pizza or whatever happens to be on her mind. Sometimes it's actually hard to tell which are songs she's learning at school and which are songs she's made up (there seems to be some overlap). 

Today, for the first time, she came to me with her little Hello Kitty diary and a pink pen and asked me to transcribe the words of her newest song. There are two verses, with a refrain in the middle that goes "Oooh oooh oooh oooh." Once she saw how I wrote the first couple of "Ooohs" she took over that part from me, but I documented the rest. Then, she asked me to sing it back to her once, and she was off to her next activity. 

My husband and I have also been asked recently to add our own entries to said Hello Kitty diary (a Valentine gift from the $1 bin at Target). She mostly draws pictures so far. But I love that she has independently latched on to the idea of using this little diary to make her songs and ideas more permanent. I have a feeling that this will be the first of many songs and poems written in the first of many diaries. This particular diary we will doubtless keep forever. 

Did or do your children have diaries? 

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