The Sleep-over – by Oscar (aged 7)

On Tuesday afternoon Finlay’s best friend Oscar, who he met at pre-school, is coming over to have a sleep-over.  In the sleep-over they are going to sleep with torches in a tent in the backyard.  When Oscar and Finlay are asleep thousands of wild bats fly over them.  Once Oscar asked Finlay if he has wild pigs or cats and he said, “I’ve got wild cats.”  On Wednesday morning Oscar’s sleep-over will be over.

Oscar (aged 7)

Oscar has begun to work with more complex sentences.  He is working on ways of combining three concepts or phrases into one sentence without using the conjunctive ‘and’.  For example, in the the sentence about bats he started with these sentences:

• When Oscar and Finlay are asleep the bats will fly over them.
• The bats are wild.
• There are thousands of bats.

and combined them together into a sentence which used adjectives.  

In the first sentence, however, he combined these sentences:

• On Tuesday afternoon a boy named Oscar was having a sleep-over with his best friend Finlay.
• They have been friends since pre-school.

This time he created a complex sentence with a main clause and a subordinate clause in the middle.  The subordinate clause, which could be left out of the sentence, is marked by commas on both sides.