First steps to reading.
For a few months now, Colin has been thinking a lot about words. “Hey Mom, did you know that ‘bridge’ starts with /b/, B?” “Do you know what’s cool? When Buzz Lightyear says ‘To infinity and beyond!’...
View ArticleReading homemade books.
The big thing today was making books and acting them out. Colin has continued to occasionally read sentences I’ve written on the whiteboard. This time I gave him three sentences together that made a...
View ArticleSnow candy!!
All winter, ever since I read Little House in the Big Woods to Colin, Alex has yearned to make snow candy the way Laura Ingalls did. All winter we’ve had no more than an inch of dirty snow at a …...
View ArticleLooking ahead to third grade.
Our new school year starts on June 1st. One of my goals for third grade is that Alex start to take a little more ownership of her education, so I asked her what she would like to accomplish this year....
View ArticleCursive and the perfectionist.
Let me tell you, when a perfectionist starts to learn cursive it is fun times. “Augh! Look at this y! It’s horrible! Look at how messed up it is!” “No, Alex. I’m not going to look at your messed up …...
View ArticleAll cursive, all the time.
Alex is obsessed with cursive. She’s been tearing through the basic book that’s languished on the shelf all year (I don’t value cursive, so it’s always been optional) and writing her spelling and...
View ArticleThird grade writing, Part 1: Writing Strands.
In kindergarten, first grade, and second grade we required virtually no original writing from Alex. No daily journaling. No creative writing. No descriptive paragraphs, expository paragraphs,...
View ArticleThird grade writing, part II: Alex’s first paragraph.
As promised, Alex’s first paragraph: The Stream There is a stream in the forest at the end of our street. Where the water is shallow it moves fast, but in the deep parts it moves slowly. The water is...
View ArticleAttack of the evil sorcerer!
Colin is pretty good at sounding out words, but I’ve noticed that he has a lot of trouble telling the difference between lower-case b and d. He usually has to guess. Today a sorcerer visited our house...
View Article“The Kitten Who Thought It Was a Duck.”
“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” – Gene Fowler. Alex is having a hard time with the jump from writing a few sentences to …...
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