Spelling Fun

With Holly's spelling each week I try to mix it up a bit. Typically I will set her up with an art project focused on her spelling words or a secret code game, maybe a scavenger hunt or riddles to solve. This week I broke out our little word tiles that are linked with coins. She spelled each word on her list, added up the total and wrote it next to that work in her book. After she was all done, I paid her for the most expensive word. Before she started she made a prediction as to which word would be the winning word... she learned her prediction was wrong. This was a fun lesson that tied in both math and spelling!!

Spelling & Art

This week for spelling a fun project has included a Christmas Tree - a very simple and easy project!

I cut the pieces so that Holly would have to sort them by size correctly. I wrote all of her spelling words, one on each branch for her to copy. Then she had to organize them correctly before finishing her project. She loved doing this one and it is very easy to accomplish!

Her words for this week are:

• kinder
• kindest
• longer
• longest
• faster
• fastest
• softer
• softest
• higher
• highest
• some
• more

Spelling & Art

For part of Holly's weekly word review I attempt to incorporate the words into a fun little art project. Something where she will get one more opportunity to write them and review them with me. This week Holly created a turkey from construction paper. Each feather contains one of her spelling words, which this week are:
    

•      walls
•      dolls
•      eggs
•      boxes
•      dresses
•      wishes
•      classes
•      lunches
•      beaches
•      dishes
•      very
•      people

Her project turned out pretty cute, was easy enough for her to create on her own and best of all... she had fun!

I forgot to take some photos of her creating so this is the final product, my only shot.

Secret Code Fall Words

Our Fall Words list has been posted on the learning wall, we have done some Read, Build & Write mats with them and of course read them a lot. However today I used this great little secret code sheet I found online here: Mrs. Gilchrist's Class - Secret Code Word Sheet We have used this for fun work or spelling words, but today Holly created a small booklet of fall words we are focusing on this month.

To do this we have a laminated version of this Secret Code Words sheet and then I created small sheets with the codes to spell out her fall words. I put blanks down to write the letters on. She had the figure them out, read them to me and then draw them. When all finished she stapled them together as a mini-booklet. It was a lot of fun!

I am amazed how adding a Secret Code element can change the whole concept of learning new words... makes learning a lot of fun!

Spelling & Art

This week with Holly's spelling words she created a fall sun flower art project. It turned out really cute and was a fun way to practice her spelling words just one more time. It is nice to enjoy activities like art or a game with the mundane work of weekly spelling words, she really enjoys it and it appears to be effective.

On 12 yellow flower petals I wrote her spelling words out, she copied them. Then she glued them around the center of her flower - in retrospect I should have had her alphabetize them... maybe a different time. Once glued down she created a stem with leaves and added. The final touch was adding painted sunflower seeds by adding dots.

This was super simple to create, however she LOVED it!

Spelling & Art

I am working on some new ideas for Holly to enjoy her weekly spelling work. Breaking out a workbook each week is not at all interesting or honestly effective enough for Holly. She needs something a bit more creative infused to her lesson, creative ways to practice her work and have some fun with learning. For this weeks word list I have a couple of items we are going to try... a couple word games I have put together and a couple of artistic ideas.

This was her first Spelling & Art combined lesson. After visiting the pumpkin patch we looked at the photos and discussed how the land looked. Greenery, dirt, leaves, grass, weeds.... it was not a classic 'all brown dirt patch' or the 'perfect green patch' - it was a mix, natural. With that knowledge Holly set out with pastel to draw the pumpkin patch from today... trying to keep it natural. Then she added pumpkins to her patch that had all of her spelling words written on them. She had a chance to review her words, write them out in a fun manner and then will use this to read or study with later in the week.

Combining spelling and art was fun for her and I am looking forward to visiting some more ideas I have for projects down the road.

Silly Sentences

Holly loves games, loves them!!! We picked this game up for Holly over the holidays and boy has it been fun! We play it as a family and I have pulled it out during designated 'school time'... always a good time.

This game is introducing simple sentence structure through silly words. It is a fun way to introduce or review nouns, verbs, articles, prepositions and adjectives - in our case a lot of introduction. Holly understands what a noun is so far and is starting to understand verbs. If you are looking for a fun way to review sentence structure and encourage reading this game is great. Best part, I picked it up at Borders with a coupon... not too shabby!

Sight Words

We have really worked this year with Holly on reading and sight words - her reading has blossomed. Earlier on if you casually asked her to read she would tell you that she couldn't, even though she could. She lacked confidence. Now, Holly is really enjoying reading to us, to others and to herself quietly.

To get her to this point she really has worked on learning sight words through various games, writing, magnets, repetition reading, work sheets and fun work books. She started a new book to reinforce much of what she knows yet introduce some new sight words. The best part is that she is reading her way through it independently and feeling very confident. She loves it!

She likes how this Scholastic book looks, how it is designed and the variety of activities in it keep her interest. I like that she is able to work very independently with it and feel successful! So far this little book is a win win.

Learning to Alphabetize

I have started a new little list of sight words for Holly to work on and review in some cases - just to really build up her reading vocabulary. In this little word list they introduce the basics on alphabetizing... and Holly loves it! I was thinking it would be a lot harder to grasp, but nope.

I went over it one time and explained a good system to get her started until she feels a lot more comfortable. For now, she writes out a line of her ABC's and then works her way down the line to organize her work then she double checks it with a singing it and if everything looks good she glues it down. So far, so good! Holly has even encountered having to sort by the second letter, twice and I think she understands you repeat the process using the second letters. We'll keep working on it with her list each week... if nothing else for fun right now as she thinks of it as a game.

These sheets can be found at: http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/

The Day to Day Stuff

Often times on this little blog I'll post a fun art project, outing or experiment that Holly has enjoyed -- but, please know there is that day to day stuff we do all the time. The reading, math, writing, listening, science, history and so much more! Typically we cover at least eight to ten different subjects/activities a day if not more, depending on how in depth we are on them.

Today for instance we started with reading, I read Holly a great book on weather that does a nice job breaking down how weather works and what a meteorologist does. Then she read three books to me. After reading we moved over to spelling words for the week - reviewed reading all of her sight words (sounding out some, knowing others and stumped on the tough ones) there are about 75 of them right now, she wrote out her weekly words several times and then spelled them out with magnets on our board. Holly worked on math and subtraction, diamonds on the geo board, a word search of winter related words, did some copy work with a four line poem on snowflakes, did her 100 sheet and we did a lot of talking about the weather for the day as she filled in her weather graph.