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Independent Reading

One of the most wonderful things I think we can do for children is put engaging and interesting books in their hands and give them time to read. Reading opens doorways for the imagination, takes us on adventures, and teaches about topics that we might not be able to explore first hand.

If you are interested in learning more about the value of reading in children’s lives, I recommend the blog The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. Her posts never fail to intrigue me and keep me committed to reading as part of our learning lifestyle.

Also, check out this research article about why independent reading is linked to school achievement.

Then pull out a favorite book, and share it with your child or classroom!

Posted in Early Childhood, Families, Homeschoolers, Intermediate, Language Arts, Parents, Primary, Secondary, Teachers, Website- free.

3 comments

By Heddi Craft – February 11, 2010

Word Ladders

The Daily Word Ladders books by Scholastic are a great resource for building vocabulary and spelling skills.

Available for grades 1-2, 2-3, and 4-6, each book uses the same concept at increasingly difficult levels. Each page shows a ladder of 5 to 10 rungs. The first rung has a word. The second rung gives a clue for the word that belongs on the next rung and lines for each letter of that word. For instance, on one ladder the first word is “coat” and the clue for the next rung is “A black rock that produces heat. Change one letter.” The activity continues in this manner, with clues to add, subtract, rearrange, or change letters to create a word with a particular meaning until you reach the top rung. Each page has a theme to which the top and bottom word belong– so “hot” may be turned in to “cold” or “coat” turned into “glove”.

The wonderful thing about word ladders is they combine the elements of a game with some great brain exercises. It’s fun to discover that changing a single letter changes the sounds of almost all the letters around it. The pages can be completed alone or in small groups and are a great addition to vocabulary and spelling curriculums.

Posted in Books, Homeschoolers, Intermediate, Language Arts, Primary, Teachers.

No comments

By Heddi Craft – February 7, 2010

BBC Typing

If you have a child who is learning to type, check out BBC’s Dance Mat Typing before you buy any software. This is a free typing program available online and perfect for elementary aged students who are learning to type.

Rock-and-roll animals guide you through learning each of the letters in Flash animation. After learning the position of the letters, you practice lines of typing, as a little record “breaks” at the end of each line of type. Every few lines is another encouraging animation. If you make a mistake, the correct letter on the pictured keyboard calls out, “Me, me!”

Only a few letters are introduced at a time and the practice is mostly real words, not lines of random letters. The letters you have learned are shown in bright colors and are color coded with a different color for each finger.

Your child will need to remember what lesson he or she is on, there’s no login so the computer doesn’t save the information for you. Sometimes the guides are a bit difficult to understand because they have a strong accent, but this never seemed to bother my son. All the lowercase letters and the shift key are introduced, but not the numbers and extra symbols or tabs.

The website is a great introduction to typing for a beginner. My son can now touch type and is building speed by actually typing the things he is writing.

Posted in Families, Homeschoolers, Intermediate, Language Arts, Primary, Teachers, Website- free.

2 comments

By Heddi Craft – January 24, 2010

Fridge Phonics

Fridge Phonics is one of the few “noisy toys” that I recommend. Although reading the English language is full of exceptions to the rule, knowing the most common sounds which letters make is useful to most children when they are first learning to read.

Fridge phonics consists of 26 raised letter magnets and a magnetized base. When the letters are placed in the base and pressed, a song begins, such as, “F says fff, F says fff, every letter makes a sound, F says fff.” For vowels, the long and short sound are included, as in “A says aa and A says aah, every letter makes a sound, A says aa– and aah!” The tune is catchy, you will find yourself singing it under your breath, which is why it’s such a novel and useful toy. Your kids will be singing it, too, and dancing to it while learning the names of the letters and their most common sounds.

This toy works well for kids who are very auditory, who already like to sing catchy tunes. The letters are in strong relief, so they stand out visually. When held, the shape of the letter is easy to trace with your fingers. They can be used on the refrigerator to spell words with no repeating letters. I watched my son at a fairly young age use the toy to figure out which letters he needed to spell his choice of words.

The letters are all uppercase, although expansion packs for lowercase letters have been available in the past. Also, sometimes the sounds of the letter are not as clear as they could be. You may need to sing along so your kids can see the shape of your mouth as you form some of the sounds.

Posted in Early Childhood, Families, Homeschoolers, Language Arts, Primary, Toys.

No comments

By Heddi Craft – January 9, 2010

Othello

Othello has been around for 30 years or more, making it a “classic” board game. It is a fairly straightforward strategy game for two players and a great introduction to strategy games in general. The 64 identical pieces are two sided– one black and one white. Players take turns putting down a single new piece and “capturing” the other color between the piece they put down and one already on the board of their color. “Captured” pieces are turned over to expose the player’s color. The game board is ever changing and moves that capture many pieces in one turn can spell disaster in the next.

Buried in the rules is way to help even the game out between more and less experienced players. It turns out the corners of the board are important because they cannot be captured once played, so placing four pieces of the weaker player’s color in the corners gives that player some advantage.

My son began enjoying this game around age eight, but his six year old sister can also play. Beginning players first learn how to logic out which spots allow the most captures, later players start to think ahead and sometimes take lesser pieces for greater pieces later.

Although I think part of the fun of the game is the physical act of flipping the pieces back and forth, there are also free versions on the web.

Posted in Adults, Families, Games, Gift Giving Ideas, Intermediate, Secondary, Thinking Skills.

1 comment

By Heddi Craft – January 1, 2010

Word Building

Word building is a way to learn how letters in our language behave and have fun as well. The basic concept is simple: Take a word with five or more letters, put all the letters on separate slips of paper, and give them to a child out of order. The child’s job is to rearrange the letters to find the original word, but also to find other words that can be made by using two or more of the letters.

For instance, if you start with the word “breakfast,” you could find as, ask, fast, sat, bat, rat, fat, bar, far, rest, break, fake, take, safe, steak, and many others. In just this short list, the child is finding word families (groups of rhyming words), using the letter E in three different ways, and using a variety of consonant blends. This activity can be extended by the teacher or the parent giving hints to find additional words, such as “Change one letter in FAKE to make a word that means protected,” and you’ve added a layer of vocabulary building to the activity.

There are several books out there that have word building activities. Making Words and Making Big Words are both filled with words, lists of the possible words made from the original, and strips to copy and cut apart that have all the letters on them. These books also include spelling and phonics patterns to emphasize for each word. I also like the Scrambled Word Building Book Grade 1 and Grade 2 because the letters and space to write words are all nicely placed on a single page. My only complaint is that there isn’t enough room to write all possible words.

Posted in Books, Homeschoolers, Intermediate, Language Arts, Primary, Teachers.

No comments

By Heddi Craft – December 17, 2009

Spelling Power

If you are a homeschooler looking for one spelling program that can last you from third grade through high school, Spelling Power may be for you. The author has created a program based on the idea that students should learn to spell the most frequently used and frequently misspelled words first using a multisensory practice method.

A fairly simple pre-test allows you to place your child on the correct level in the eleven levels of words, no matter what the child’s age. The words are then organized within the levels by their usage of the 44 sounds used in the English language, often the vowel sounds. For instance, a group of words may all use the long E sound but the spellings will include ea, ee, y, ie, ei, ey, and eCe. (Isn’t English just grand?) As you begin each list, you discuss the “rule” for how that sound can be spelled.

Daily spelling practice in this program is 15 minutes long. For the first five minutes you give a pretest for the words on the current list your child is working on: You say the word, use it in a sentence, your child repeats the word, spells it on his/her paper, then says the word again, you spell the word correctly, and your child immediately corrects it of wrong. When you get to the end of five minutes or the end of the list, you stop testing. At this point, your child usually has 1-3 words to practice.

For the second five minutes, your child practices the words. A study sheet leads the child through a multisensory practice which includes examining the word for patterns, saying the spelling aloud, visualizing the word with eyes closed, and using large muscles to write the word on a textured surface. The child also uses the missed words in a sentence of their own creation. The next day, these missed words are the first to be tested.

The third five minutes is devoted to activities from a menu in the back of the book to reinforce spelling skills. I will admit that we to do not do this step, but we do use similar activities at other times of the week.

The program is meant to be daily, and I will admit also that we use it twice a week, which seems to work well for our family. The word lists appeal to my sense of organization and the program does seem to work better than the traditional study 20 words, test, and forget method. I appreciate it that only the incorrect words are studied and retested and that the practice process is multisensory.

To mix things up, we sometimes use the word lists in other ways as we work through them. For instance, we input them into a computer program designed to practice more traditional lists and my son does those activities instead.

I’ve found the book to be a worthwhile investment, and recommend it for families who want a short and simple spelling program. It would best suited for children who like the consistency of a repeated activity as the daily work varies very little from day to day.

Posted in Books, General, Homeschoolers, Intermediate, Language Arts, Secondary.

No comments

By Heddi Craft – December 13, 2009

Discount School Supply Art Materials

Discount School Supply is my favorite place to purchase basic arts and crafts materials. Although they do not carry materials for advanced art techniques, the sell all the basics for preschool and early elementary aged children at consistently good prices and of consistently good quality. Their house brand, “Colorations”, has always been comparable to name brand products in my purchasing experience.

Especially worth looking at is their Biocolor paint. This paint is of better quality than a standard poster paint but without the off-putting smell of acrylic paints. It sticks to virtually anything, including plastic, and does not rub off leaving a powdery residue when dry. Discount School Supply has a whole line of additional products to go with the paint. One product turns the paint into slime, another when added makes it adhere to fabric. Shimmer and glitter add ins add sparkle to the paint. A line of ornaments can be decorated with the paint by adding it to a clear plastic shell. The paint can also be scraped and overlapped with interesting effects. We use this paint as our primary paint for most craft activities. The DVD of ideas is actually inspiring and full of useful suggestions.

Colorations Watercolors are also worth having. Unlike the dry disks of watercolors many of us had as children, these watercolors are already in liquid form in bottles. The pure, transparent colors are beautiful and pleasing to look at. The company also sells a variety of additional products to use with their watercolors, mostly simple craft ideas.

In addition, Discount School Supply carries pipe cleaners, beads, pom-poms, paper, collage items, scratch art, and a wide variety of clay all at prices that are usually better than what I can find locally. They often sell kits of materials at a discount compared to purchasing individually.

One area of caution: the craft kits designed to make 12 or more of the same item I’ve purchased have been of varying quality. I don’t recommend them as much as the art supplies themselves. Customer service at the company has also been very good in my experience.

Posted in Arts and Craft, Early Childhood, Homeschoolers, Parents, Primary, Teachers.

1 comment

By Heddi Craft – December 7, 2009

Boxes

When you are a kid, sometimes the best things from the store are not the toys, but the boxes they come in. Every parent has a story of the birthday when the birthday child was more interested in the box and wrapping paper than the toys within. We’ve taken this to the logical conclusion with our second and third children: we went to the appliance store and hauled away a big washing machine box and gave it as a first or second birthday present!

We cut doors and windows into the box before gifting it. We usually mix cut out holes of various shapes and heights with one or two doors or windows that are “hinged”. (Hint: for a better hinge, cut through the first outer layer of cardboard to create a crease where the door or window is to open.) We’ve learned it’s a good idea to cut a little rectangle of cardboard out of the edge of the door so there’s a place to stick your fingers in to open and close it, otherwise you get the occasional pinched finger!

These boxes get written on, pushed over, sat on and otherwise loved and abused until it’s finally time to put it in the dumpster. For inspiration, look for the book Christina Katerina and the Box, (now out of print) as a guide for how your box may transform over time.

Posted in Creative Play, Early Childhood, Families, Gift Giving Ideas, Toys.

1 comment

By Heddi Craft – December 3, 2009

Paper Toys

The Toymaker website is full of beautiful, clever, and completely free paper toys to make. Created by artist Marilyn Scott Waters, each folded or cut toy is printed from a pdf file onto your own paper. You do the cutting and the folding and sometimes gluing of specific pieces. Some are quite detailed and take a careful hand, others are easier for younger hands. The pieces are usually well marked so you can figure out what goes where. You may wish to make some for younger children while older children may want to do the cutting themselves. These toys will appeal to kids and adults with whimsical tastes.

Some of our favorites include the Penny Butterfly, the Marble Mice, and the Window to Fairyland. We’ve also enjoyed a number of the holiday items (not all are toys, really). Just browsing the toys and reading the quotes on each page is a treat in itself.

We often print the toys on light cardstock to make a more sturdy toy. Use a good quality glue if you use cardstock because glue sticks just don’t seem to stay stuck.

Posted in Adults, Arts and Craft, Early Childhood, Families, General, Homeschoolers, Intermediate, Primary, Teachers, Website- free.

No comments

By Heddi Craft – December 1, 2009