An Adventure in the River
Sorry we didn’t have a phone when this happened so we drew the pictures.
It was a sunny day. I felt like playing in the river, so we did. We were going to a waterfall by where we were staying by jumping from rock to rock on the river. When we started jumping on the rocks it was easy.
Half an hour or more later it got really difficult but I’ll tell you about that part later.
When we started out on our adventure my dad found some fish in a pool in the river. He said they were nibbling his toes. I wanted to try. And we spent a lot of time at the pool. but they didn’t nibble my toes. I was sad. We moved on.
Next we had to walk across the river in the water. Once I got across I got a sting on my neck. I didn’t know what it was but it hurt. I wanted my dad to see where I got hurt but he was busy helping my brother.
When my dad was done helping my little brother cross the river we kept going. That was when it started to get difficult.
The Difficult part
First, we had to climb through a small space. My little brother was almost out of the small space. My dad was just starting to go in the small space. Me and my brother used a vine to get through the small space. I was out of the small space, my other brother was also out.
Then my dad pulled a vine that was also in the small space a different vine not the vine that me and my brother used, to see how strong it was. Unfortunately, it pulled down a big heavy branch and boom! My brother and my dad could of got hurt. I sat there thinking of what could of happened. Everyone was scared.
“I thought we were people that were pretending to be Explorers and pretending to deal with problems that explorers deal with but we actually are dealing with the problems that Explorers deal with!” I said.
We moved on to the next difficult thing. It was kind of like a cliff but smaller. I tried to squeeze through two rocks but that failed. I almost gave up because I was frustrated that idea failed and I didn’t want to take any risks. But my dad found a way. We would have to jump off a slippery rock onto a little rocky place then jump on a couple other rocks and we’d be on top of the cliff.
Once we did that we went in a smaller river that led to the waterfall.
The Waterfall
The waterfall looked like a water slide. We watched people slide down the waterfall. I liked watching the people slide.
Going back
When we went back we went half way on the road that led to the waterfall and skipped the difficult part and went the rest on the river.
I tried to get the fish to nibble at my toes again but a little deeper and it worked.
When we got back we told my mom about are adventure.
A Few Comments From Dad
This post was written by Oliver, who is eight years old. He has been honing his writing skills on his own Lego-themed blog oliverslegos.net. I suggested that he write about this adventure we had together for our Slow Camino blog. From there, he got inspired and put forth his best work of writing to date!
I did very little corrective editing. The main exception was breaking his writing into paragraphs, which was necessary for clarity and something he didn’t have a lot of practice with. I made no wording changes, even when he used a wrong but similar sounding word, which is common for writers of his stature.
Once he finished his first draft, I read it out loud and made some editorial comments. I asked him to make connections between events that wouldn’t be obvious to the reader and include his own feelings in some of the more intense moments.
I was extremely proud of his work on this. Not just for the writing and the length of the piece, which far exceeds anything he’s written so far, but for the effort and enthusiasm he put into the work.
