We are getting all prepared to start back to homeschool next week. We ordered this year’s math books a couple of days ago and have multiplication and division flashcards ready and waiting. We have bought several fiction books for Lily’s silent reading and have some more advanced literature and poetry to read aloud and discuss. I have a weighty science book we dapple into in between real-life navigational, marine and boat electronics observations.
One area we are gearing up to conquer this year is spelling! I think Lily’s natural creativity leads her to invent fun new ways to spell words. I keep thinking that the spelling will come along with more reading and writing. However, Randall has pointed out that she is being a little creative with pronunciation, too. True – if you can’t say it, you can’t spell it. We are going to spend some time on phonics to see if this will help the spelling out and I think spelling tests are going to continue to be the Bane of Friday.
That being said, journal writing seems a little tricky for us. At times, Lily is pretty eager for journal writing time and has lots to say in her journal … until journaling morphs into a spelling lesson. If she gets an inclination that her journal will be reviewed for correct spelling, she won’t touch it or she will confine her writing to, “I like cats. Cats eat mice.” Aah the fine line between helpful guidance and soul killing criticism.
One new area of instruction, however, is going to be a breeze, I can foresee. Lily has latched on to the cursive writing dry-erase book with pleasure. Her early attempts at a cursive form of “I like cats. Cats eat mice” are a sight to please any third-grade school marm. I mentioned, even, that I thought her lowercase ‘v’ was a little off. She pointed out the example in the book and, sure enough, her lowercase ‘v’ was true to the example and I must be crippling my poor little ‘v’s since third grade. I guess I’ll just start avoiding words with the letter v.
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