Why Creative Spelling Is Not Wrong

In educational and homeschooling circles, there can be some pretty heated debate on the topic of creative spelling. ("Creative spelling" is allowing a child who is just learning to write/read to spell things how they think they might be spelled and not correct them.)

Here's what I love about creative spelling:

1. It allows for independent writing. My six-year-old can experiment with writing, making lists and maps and messages used in her various imaginative games, without needing to ask me "how do I spell...?" This gives her a real sense of ownership, making words and letters tools of play and not just school.

2. It gives my student a chance to demonstrate her understanding of the phonics rules we've learned so far. Trying to sound out a long word and write down the sounds she hears is a fabulous mental exercise, and tells me which rules need review and which have been mastered.

3. It provides an accurate snapshot of where she is with her language skills. When I look back at a paper from two months ago and compare it to today's, I can really see how much her facility with words has grown.



Now, to be clear, I do espouse a lot of the principles of classical education, and our homeschool curriculum looks more classical than anything else. And classical education does tend to discourage creative spelling, from what I've seen. I understand the reasoning behind it -- if mistakes are not corrected, the student starts to think that their "creative" spellings are the real spellings and that can be a bear to correct down the line.

We address that concern in several ways:

1. We learn phonics and spelling rules, so that over time those rules are incorporated into the creatively spelled words. It turns out that there are very few true exceptions to phonics rules, as long as you learn all of them, so eventually you will have the tools to correctly spell just about any word without ever having memorized a sight word.

2. We read a lot. For the typical non-dyslexic student, the best way to teach spelling is to read read read read read. Having seen the word correctly spelled a zillion times, the child inadvertently memorizes it (again, without flash cards or conscious memorizing) and can recall it at will.

3. We do practice writing every week, both in copywork and in our weekly letter to a friend or family member, that does use only correct spelling.

I am a vigilant defender of correct spelling and grammar. And I do strongly believe that children need to learn the right way to write and speak if they are to be taken seriously as adults. But along the path to that ultimate goal, creative spelling does have an important place.

Sound Science

This week, our science topic is "sound." We're learning a little bit about how sound travels, the silence of outer space, and demonstrating how the human ear works. Today we did two really fun experiments out of our new book,The Usborne Big Book of Experiments.



The first was to build a two-cups-and-a-length-of-string-a-phone. Which probably has a better name than that, but you get the gist. The kiddos were amazed that it actually worked. The particularly neat thing was that they could literally feel the vibrations of the string, which was a great demonstration of sound waves.



The second involved building a sort of makeshift drum, and then using the air vibrations created by the tapping of the drum to blow out a candle. I couldn't even count the number of times we relit the candle and repeated this experiment. A winner for sure!

Teaching Patience (With a Sweet Reward)

Last week, which was supposed to be a completely school-free week, my two littles decided they just had to do a science experiment. Like, right now. This is the sort of enthusiasm I just don't have it in me to squash, even if it wasn't on my clean-the-house-and-get-organized-before-school-starts agenda.

They found an experiment in our new experiment book for growing crystals. But the one in the book just had them grow crystals with "washing soda" (it's a British book). Boring! OK, they probably grow faster, but honestly... wouldn't you rather grow crystals with sugar? Yum.

So I found a recipe online, and we made up our super duper sugar syrup. We put 2 cups of water on to boil, and gradually mixed in 4 cups of sugar. Yes, you read that right. Twice as much sugar as water. Oh, and some blue food coloring.



We carefully poured into jars, and dangled strings into each jar (strings that had been rolled in sugar and tied to a pen to suspend them over the jars). And we watched. And we waited.



It's six days later, and we are still watching and waiting. We have crystals now (yay!), and if we wanted to, we could yank out those strings and enjoy some delicious rock candy right this very minute. We could! But, see... if we wait a bit longer, the crystals will have more of a chance to form, and the candy will be bigger.



In other words, I have created the ultimate test of patience. This is called delayed gratification, people, and I am watching it unfold day by day. So far, the lure of future candy is still greater than the desire for candy now, and the jars remain undisturbed. But when will we be unable to resist any longer? How long will we let the crystals grow?



Man, I hope these kids cave soon. I could really go for something crunchy and sweet...

A Closer Look

We have the coolest new toy. For months now, I've been wanting to get a simple microscope. No preparing of slides, no mega-powered lenses, just a simple tool for looking closely at stuff. So I saw a good review for the Zorb in a homeschooling resource catalog, and thought that sounded just about right. It's small, it connects directly to the computer, and you can save pictures of what you see. Cool.



Then I saw it was only $29 at Amazon and clicked "Buy Now." An impulse buy, to be sure.

Hey, sometimes I have good instincts.

Man, this thing is cool. I mean, cool. I can't even tell you how many lightbulb moments we've had around here in the past few days. And not just from the kids! Even my husband confessed that only now does he truly understand the difference between woven and knit fabric.

See? Woven:



And knit:



At 35x magnification, those fabrics look really, really different.

You know how a strawberry has its seeds on its skin? Yeah, they look like this:



Ever wondered how sharp a thumbtack really is? It's this sharp:



And granulated sugar really is made up of little crystals.



It's amazing how much knowledge can be right in front of you, if only you take a closer look.

Our Kindergarten Curriculum

Last year, when I was researching homeschooling, I spent an inordinate amount of time reading through homeschooling blogs, trying to get a sense of what homeschooling really looks like. I was thrilled to stumble upon the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop, hosted last year by Darcy at My 3 Boybarians. This year, it's being hosted by Heart of the Matter, but the gist is the same -- each week, participating bloggers post about a particular theme related to their homeschool. And this year... um, I guess I have a homeschool. So here we go.

Curriculum week! Since I have been researching homeschooling in general and particular curricula for quite a while now, it was exciting to finally take the plunge and place those orders. Here is what we've decided to use for our kindergarten year.

(Please note: I do have a two-year-old at home as well, who is along for the ride on all these adventures. I do not have any particular curriculum I am following for him, besides including him as much as possible on his own level with whatever I am doing with his sister. He is learning so much just by osmosis, that I will not pursue anything formal with him until next year at the very earliest.)

Math - We're using RightStart, level A. We have completed 13 lessons so far, and absolutely love the program. It takes the time to build an intuitive sense for numbers, and I am amazed at how well my daughter is already able to do mental addition. The manipulatives are also wonderful, and serve as a great diversion for curious two-year-olds.

Reading/Spelling - We are using All About Spelling (level 1) as both a reading program and a spelling program. The whole concept of teaching word-building tools to both decode (read) and encode (spell) words makes so much sense to me. It always struck me as odd for these two skills (which are two sides of the same coin, really) to be taught separately. I can see how much it has helped with her reading already, and am pretty sure we will be moving on to level 2 by mid-year. The program is also sensory-rich, with a lot of word-building using magnetic letters. This really helps to keep my girl engaged. She is also doing independent reading to me every day, as well as reading for her own pleasure. She particularly loves the Dick and Jane books, and -- get this -- the McGuffey readers (first published in 1838). Oh yeah, we're kickin' it old school around here...



Grammar/Language Arts - We have been playing a great game called Very Silly Sentences to learn the parts of speech, and also doing MadLibs on our many road trips this summer. Once we get into a nice routine this fall, I will gradually blend in First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, but at a relaxed pace since it is technically for first grade. We'll just see how it goes. And in terms of literature, we're going to keep doing what we have been doing every day for the past several years: read. Read, and read, and read. I generally read things aloud to her that are far above her official grade level, and she has the vocabulary to show for it. Some of last year's read-alouds included The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Hobbit. Some of the titles I have lined up for this year:

Magic or Not?
Little House in the Big Woods
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Alice In Wonderland
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Totally subject to change based on the whims of the moment, of course, but this gives me a place to start if we're ever stuck for a book.

Handwriting - The preschool where she did PreK last year used Handwriting Without Tears, and since it seemed to be working for her, I just went ahead and ordered the next workbook. So far so good. She is still writing a hodge-podge of upper-case and lower-case letters in a variety of sizes, so my goal for her for the year is to be able to print legibly using appropriate case. Ha! It's good to dream big. In any case, we'll keep working on it.



History/Geography - Not to put down the importance of learning about community helpers or anything, but she already did that, for the past two years in preschool. She's learned about firefighters and police officers and all the usual preschool social studies jazz. Important, for sure! But we're skipping over the usual kindergarten social studies curriculum and going straight for history and geography. And to paraphrase Julie Andrews, the beginning is a very good place to start, so we're using The Story of the World Volume 1 (Ancients), supplemented with additional reading from the library. Very fun! We are also making a timeline to make sense of the chronology of history, and using mapwork from the SOTW activity guide to incorporate geography studies.

Science/Nature - This is the one subject for which we are not using a curriculum at all. My girl is naturally very science- and nature-oriented, so I am simply following her interest. We are reading a lot, checking out DVD's from the library, going on field trips, etc. She will also continue to work on her nature journal on our frequent nature walks, and keep her birdwatching log book. In some subject areas, having to make it all up myself would give me an anxiety attack, but in this arena, it feels very freeing. This is one of the biggest benefits of homeschooling -- I get to indulge her interests and allow her to dig as deep as she wants into the areas that most interest her. Should be fun.

Physical Education - Since I'm not exactly a paragon of virtue when it comes to exercise, this is definitely an area where we need outside structure! She just started a twice-weekly tae kwon do class, and will play on a soccer team in the fall. When soccer is over, I'll see whether I think the TKD is sufficient, or whether we should look for some other kind of winter activity (gymnastics, maybe?). For now, I think she's all set.

Whew! So that's our curriculum choices. I am really excited to dive in truly full-time when big sister starts her [gulp] senior year in high school. Oh, what a year we have ahead of us...

A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool

We've been dabbling here and there through the summer in our kindergarten lessons, getting a feel for each subject and curriculum in a low-pressure, fun way. But I was getting nervous about how it was all going to come together when we had to really sit down and "do school" for more than just a half hour at a time. So I planned this week to be our first "official" week of school, so we have time to see what works (and what doesn't!) and tweak the schedule before Fall. Also, big sister is away at the beach, so we won't be tempted to pester irritate play with her instead of buckling down.

So since today was our first day of doing a full day of school, I thought I'd share what a day in the life of our brand-spankin'-new homeschool looks like. Veterans, feel free to laugh heartily at my inevitable hubris, but so far it seems to be going really well!

If you don't hear from me again by next week, send help.

Here's how our day played out, roughly speaking...

7:00 AM - Both kids were up and we made our way downstairs. They both immediately seized the rulers I bought yesterday (and craftily left on the kitchen table, all part of my master plan, mwahahaha), and ran off to measure everything in the house. Listening to the two-year-old shout out "One... two... three... EIGHTEEN INCHES!" was priceless.



7:30 AM - They wandered back into the kitchen in search of breakfast. Thankfully, by this time I had made my coffee, retrieved my newspaper, and employed one of my favorite tricks for ensuring a peaceful start to the day. I'd covered the kitchen table with paper and set out markers and colored pencils.



Inevitably, this leads to at least a full half hour for me to wake up, read the paper, and drink my coffee. Essential to everyone's sanity.



Ahhh. I also looked over the plan I'd made for our week. I figure planning out every hour of every day is a level of detail that feels too rigid for me. However, flying by the seat of my pants feels a little too loosey-goosey. So I came up with a weekly plan, so each day can unfold as it may, but I have an idea of what we need to accomplish in order to stay on track. It's stapled to the inside of a folder in which I have already copied all the worksheets, etc. that we'll need for the week. I think this will work well for our style, but I'm sure it will require tweaking until it fits just right.



So while we were also eating breakfast (and some of us were getting appropriately caffeinated), our resident kindergartener was illustrating (and narrating, I might add) a Lion King-based story so elaborate, it would make your head spin. Pretty cool.



8:30 AM - We headed upstairs for me to shower and us all to get dressed and ready to take on the day. The kiddos get to watch a show while I'm in the shower, a routine that evolved when I was still trying to keep a young toddler from unrolling the whole roll of toilet paper and other such nonsense while I was otherwise engaged. But hey, it's Backyardigans! Who doesn't love the Backyardigans?



9:00 AM - Report to the schoolroom! Okay, it's not a schoolroom. It's just the family room. But I put all our school stuff in this corner, so at least it's not exploding all over the house. For now. In reality, we "do school" all over the house, but I love having a home for all our books and manipulatives and such.



For instance, we often do math on the floor. I don't know why, she says she thinks better on the floor...? Whatever, as long as she's focusing, I really don't care. By the way, we are using RightStart math (level A), and so far love love love it.



Little brother loves the geoboards. Which worked out well, since we didn't need them for this lesson. Shh, don't tell him he's just playing! He will tell you quite seriously that he is "doing math too!"



Had to move to the coffee table for our rectangles activity...



9:30 AM - Math was over, and the two-year-old was getting restless (and distracting). So we attempted to watch an Eyewitness DVD about plants, which is our science subject for the week. There was a lot of horsing around and not a whole lot of paying attention, but this just tells me that they needed to let off steam. No worries, they both had a few "hey, that's a cool plant!" moments, so I'm gonna call it good.

We talked about the parts of a plant, which she already knows (the kid's a gardener, after all), so she colored and labeled a worksheet.



By the end, there was a major case of wiggling going on, so I declared recess.



10:30 AM - Bike ride to the playground!



Snack under a tree!



Our daily dose of Vitamin D, as well as some much needed running around time. Amazing how much calmer and focused they were when we returned.

11:15 AM - Reading time on the couch. I selected the book about plants, but then they each chose a few others to add to the pile.



11:45 AM - Free play for the kiddos while I make lunch. Spaghetti and meatballs was requested, and since I didn't have any bread to make sandwiches, I didn't have an easy alternative to offer. So spaghetti and meatballs it was.



Yum.

12:15 PM - Lunch. During lunch, I read them a poem I had printed out: Robert Louis Stevenson's "Bed in Summer." It's about the unfairness of having to go to bed when it's still light out. They loved it. The two-year-old asked me to read it over and over and over. Then the five-year-old grabbed the paper and read it herself a few times (based on a combination of memory and sounding-out). Very fun.



12:45 PM - Time for the two-year-old's nap. We went upstairs and read a couple of books. As usual, the five-year-old said goodnight to him by declaring him to be the "best brother in the whole wide universe," and he fell asleep to his CD of folk songs from Appalachia.

1:00 PM - With little brother asleep, it was time to really focus. Phonics time. The program we are using is called All About Spelling, and was initially developed as a spelling program, but a lot of people also use it for phonics. It's a wonderful curriculum, and we have both really enjoyed using it. But it does take focus. And time. I think it took us an hour to work through the lesson, but it was worth it. It's meaty stuff.



2:00 PM - Time to unwind a bit. We have been reading the second Harry Potter book for the past few weeks, and really needed to get past the scary part. (Note to self: do not stop reading at a point where a child may be in danger. You will get woken in the middle of the night by a child having a basilisk nightmare.) We read for over an hour, and were able to get everyone safely out of the Chamber of Secrets... phew!



3:15 PM - Little brother woke up from his nap, and wanted to join in on the reading fun. So we spent the next 45 minutes reading picture books on the couch.

4:00 PM - Tea time, otherwise known as afternoon snack. (The kids get decaf tea that is more milk than tea, but they adore having tea just like Mommy.) They watched a few videos from the They Might Be Giants Here Comes Science album, and we talked some more about photosynthesis.



And that was our day! I can't wait until tomorrow.

Where do you go to school?

It's that time.

Kindergarten. We got a little extra time due to a fall birthday, but this fall my five-year-old and her friends will be marching off to kindergarten.



It just turns out that our girl won't be marching all that far.

The kitchen table, to be exact.

Yes, while our eldest is gearing up to begin her senior year in high school, we have decided to homeschool the kindergartner.

Some days I'm overwhelmed by what I've taken on, but I am also truly exhilarated by the possibilities. I am so excited about this journey we've begun. It seems such a natural extension of our family culture, that it's funny to think how biased I was against homeschooling just a few years ago.

Just one of the many benefits I've seen so far: continuity. I know exactly what it is my girl is working on, what she needs to practice, and the learning comes with us wherever we go.



All the way to the woods and the sea.

Number Word Matching Game

One of the concepts I'm working on with my five-year-old right now is number sense. We are doing a lot with manipulatives, including an abacus, to build an intuitive sense for numbers. Meanwhile, she is also in the beginning stages of reading and finding that number words can be some pretty tricky fellows. (I mean seriously, "two"? "eight"? "one"? Who came up with these spellings??)



So I came up with the following game to help reinforce the association between the actual quantity represented by a numeral, and the appropriate number word.

The game board has dots representing the quantities one through ten, in order across the board. Then I gave her a set of cards, mixed up, that each had a number word printed on it. She just had to put the word cards on top of the corresponding quantity. And that's it!



Okay, might seem boring, but she got a real kick out of it, and it's a quick little exercise to keep building her familiarity with number words. And a little more engaging than flash cards. I think if we play this little game every day for a week or two, she'll have those number words down cold.

Of course the first thing she did was to annotate the game board with the appropriate numerals. (Backwards.) Hey, it's all learnin'...



The game board and cards are available as PDF's for your downloading pleasure. I recommend printing them on card stock. Just cut out the cards, and voilà! You can match up your numbers and words with the best of 'em.

The Magic of Butterflies

What is it that is so captivating about butterflies? Why are children young and old so entranced with them?



The obvious answer is their remarkable transformation. Metamorphosis is one of nature's most grandiose and extravagant miracles. It is incredible in the truest sense... you seriously cannot believe your eyes, when you get the chance to see it occur.

But also I think it's because they are so fleeting. Their lives are so short, and so tied to the seasons -- the first butterfly is the truest harbinger of Spring. And caterpillars are so accessible. They are easy to find (in their season), and they will crawl all over your arm and tickle you and you can watch them munch leaves.

We have found ourselves quite smitten with butterflies lately. First, there was the tent caterpillar we found at the park. We brought it home to observe it, and placed it in one of our bug-studying habitats. It was so active and had such interesting markings. I was looking forward to trying to get a good photo of it, but surprise! we woke up in the morning to find it had formed a cocoon. And about two weeks later, we woke up to find the cocoon empty. (Sadly, I didn't get a good picture of the moth either. It's so annoying when nature won't comply with my compulsive need to document everything!)



Then we ordered some painted lady caterpillars. They were so tiny and still when they arrived, I thought for sure they had died in transit. But no, they ate their food and grew and pooped and ate their food and grew and pooped, exactly as the enclosed pamphlet said they would.



And they formed chrysalises! And then... they emerged. As butterflies! Beautiful, active, sugar-water-drinking butterflies. They were amazing. We observed them for a few days, and then released them to allow them to complete their life cycle out in the world.



We watched them fly away, and then noticed that this one hadn't gone far. "Look!" I called the five-year-old over, "Look, that one's still right there in the grass!" No sooner had she identified that particular butterfly as her favorite, the one she had dubbed "Late Rose" because it had been the last to emerge from its chrysalis, than we watched as a gray catbird swooped down and caught it in its beak.


Seconds before the catbird swooped in.

Usually, my girl is very matter-of-fact about these things, but this time, she cried. She yelled at the catbird. And then she convinced herself that perhaps that wasn't Late Rose at all, it was some other butterfly who just happened to be there, some other butterfly that she hadn't raised. Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.

So we were very excited to get to see the butterfly show at the Krohn Conservatory on our recent trip to Cincinnati. It was an amazing display, highlighting butterflies of Japan. First we got to see the butterfly nursery.



Then we entered a room that was literally filled with butterflies, and we each held a silk flower dipped in nectar and hoped that one would land on ours.

They were so incredibly beautiful.



We stood very still. We willed them to come to us.



Over here, butterflies!



And then... magic.



Happily, my yard is full of these beautiful pollinators right now. Butterflies, like bees, are essential to our ecosystem. There are lots of easy ways to make sure your garden is attractive to these colorful visitors -- the National Wildlife Federation has a helpful guide.

After all, we all need a little magic in our lives.