Tammy and Johann have been having a great time making their own word books. We have a few sketch books with a stiff weight that are quickly disappearing to this endeavor. Tammy and Johann add 3–4 pages each day. First Tammy makes dashed line forms for the capital and lower case forms of the letter in the upper right quandrant of the page, in large 2–3 inch letters. Johann decides what item—that begins with that letter—should go on the page. Invariably it is an animal of course. Tammy draws the dashed spelling of the animal’s name in slightly smaller letter forms (about 2” tall) and then comes drawing the animal itself. Sometimes Johann asks Tammy to draw the animal, and sometimes he wants to do it himself. Either way once a page has been prepped, Johann practices his writing by tracing all the letters and then gets to color the animal. Then I bind the pages up using a plastic coil binder once all the pages are completed for a book and Johann has decorated a cover page. Right now we are working on book number three.
On the subject of spelling, Johann has been introduced to word search puzzles now, an he absolutely loves them. He picked out a word search book today at the book store that he wanted to get. Naturally it featured animals. So far in one day he has done 6 puzzles (each has 3 hidden animal names), and it was a bit of an effort to convince him we could do more after dinner. In doing the puzzles we let him find the letters himself, but we reinforce the spelling, by having him spell out each animal he needs to find (there is a picture and the spelled out name of each animal beside the puzzle itself) and then pronounce the name of the animal—basically spelling bee style. While he’s finding the word he revisits the spelling and checks off the letters as he finds them. Of course he also surprised me momentarily when he remembered the spelling of “beaver” and “collie” after spelling them out once. Beaver shouldn’t have surprised me much, he’s used that one in one of the word books he made, but “collie” is an entirely new word. These little word search books are going to be a great asset in the coming months, heck even the next few days and weeks as the snow and cold are keeping us indoors more than we like. Luckily they are cheap, and if neccessary we can make some of our own as well. The only thing I don’t like about them is that they use all capital letter forms for the words.
I know, it’s been a bit since I put anything up… but here is a little entry and I will be posting a few new pictures in the next couple of days…