[Y7] Kahu Manu (2) Life in Pages

There was a long wait between signing up for Kahu Manu and the first session. In between, the results came through for the classes that needed an application and a ballot, and we paid the fees that were due. Just before everything was confirmed, Min changed her mind. The bagel business was out, and a monster making and sewing programme was in. Then in August, for one full week, Kahu Manu Cycle A replaced every regular class on the timetable: Life in Pages.

Life in Pages is a programme where the children choose and gather their own journals and materials, then build a bullet journal of their own. Min went round Typo, Whitcoulls and Kmart, taking her time over which journal to buy. In the end she settled on one that matched her friends' in size and design, clean but pretty. She also picked out an alphabet sticker book, pearl stickers and patterned paper for her journaling. For the bits and pieces she would actually use, we added a few masking tapes, stickers and double sided tape to what we already had at home, ordering a couple of easier ones online.

At this age journaling is still a kind of making and playing. Watching her on video calls with her friends, all of them holding up the supplies they had gathered, it was clearly part of the fun.

Her journal changed every day. One day she came home having filled a page introducing herself. Another day she had spread a vision board across two facing pages. I laughed for a long time at that vision board, so densely packed with small things that there wasn't a gap left anywhere. She says she still doesn't know what she wants to do or who she wants to be, but a board filled with everything she loves might turn out to be a hint at the shape of it.

The next day she came home with a monthly spread, the grid ruled out carefully by hand. She is learning how to manage her own time, keep track of what is coming, and break a goal down into steps she can actually take. There is something of the same thread in the magazine the girls and I make together, in how we go about it and what we hope it gives them.

For now it is only ruled squares. But they grow, and soon enough there will be schedules of their own, and dates they don't want to forget. Some days, perhaps, she will sit down beside a mother who journals for the pleasure of it, heads together over an open page.

At the end of the five days she said she had loved it. She may well think of it as a special sort of play with her friends, in place of lessons. The journal has sat neatly on the shelf for a few days now, but I hope it thickens little by little, and fills up with everything worth keeping.

The next cycle is three weeks away: Buddy Learning, where she will be paired with a primary school child and teach them something.

READ MORE:
[Y7] Understanding Year 7
[Y7] Kahu Manu (1) New way of learning