Writing!!!!!!!
I have HUGE news here, Bunny is writing!!!!!! We decided to do some school yesterday since we weren’t doing anything else, and Bunny wanted to. She was drawing a picture of a sun, and I asked if she could tell me what sounds were in “sun”. She started to think about it, and said “well there is a ‘s’ and it ends with ‘n'” I asked her what the middle sound was and she said “a”.Then she wrote it down on her paper. Well I told her good job, and that it was cool that she thought of a word and was able to put it on paper! This finally seemed to mean something! She looked, thought, then wrote ‘p’ ‘a’ ‘n’. She was so excited. Then I said what about “rod”? So she wrote “rod”! I was trying not to shout and jump up and down! 🙂 The best part was when she looked at me and said “I cant believe I am writing Mom!!!!” She tried to write “world” next (this was a little too hard, but we did it). She is so excited. I am so excited that she is writing! It means that all of the studying that I have done is paying off! She is writing, just like Montessori said that kids should! So we are really excited here! She wants to do more, and I cant wait to see what she writes!
The only thing is that I have corrected some of her spelling (like sun and world) because she asked if that was really how it was spelled and I know that she memorizes every word she writes. I know that we are not supposed to correct spelling at this stage, so do you think I should? Anyone have any thoughts on this?
May 16, 2011 @ 3:57 pm
So nice to see her focus ate her work..wonderful job!!
patty
May 16, 2011 @ 8:31 pm
I correct Bear, especially if I am seeing a pattern of error. She was in the habit of writing luv which is great, she is sounding it out phonetically, but I wanted her to start memorizing the correct spelling. She memorizes very fast and I didn’t want her to memorize wrong spellings. I think as long as you validate her letter choice (yes, we do hear a “uhh” sound in Love, but the English language doesn’t always follow the rules, here’s how it is spelled if you look it up in the dictionary.)
Hope that helps:) I think the key is not to correct everything all at once or all on one day as that may be discouraging.
May 16, 2011 @ 9:12 pm
I think Bear spends more time writing than Kal-El does, so our answers will be different for now. For now I don’t correct Kal-El unless I’m asked. He asks me A LOT. Sounds just like Bunny. He has become aware that there is sometimes a difference between how the he sounds out a word and they way the rest of the world spells it naturally through reading books together. His level of awareness is at a healthy level. When he feels that what he is writing is extra important or he has a nagging memory of seeing a word spelled another way he’ll ask. I’m not going to lie to him and tell him he spelled something right when he didn’t. I have some old posts in which I dictated Homfray’s thoughts on this that you might want to dig up.
I use his spelling errors to prompt a reading lesson at a later time that introduces that rule. I might not correct “late” spelled “lait” immediately, but I make note of it and give a lesson about silent e later. Like TGWPT’s said, I wouldn’t let him spell a word he uses over and over (like his name) wrong. I didn’t let him learn his Grandma’s name (Grammie) spelled wrong.
Unlike Bear, Kal-El doesn’t tend to “memorize” things. Me Too does. Kal-El tends to adapt his ways without comment as he incorporates new information. I’ve seen his spelling naturally improve as he learns more reading rules. I will probably have to use a different approach with Me Too who read “brown bear, brown bear” to me this morning while accurately pointing to each and every word at the right time as he went along. Funny considering he can’t read a stitch.
I hope to post this week. We are under construction and it’s eating up my posting time.
May 17, 2011 @ 1:03 am
Thanks everyone for your thoughts! I really am trying to not say anything about her spelling, but she does ask and I know that she memorizes. For example, when she wrote sun she wrote “SAN”. She asked if it was right, and I said that if that was how she thought it sounded then it was good. But then she wrote it on 3 different pieces of paper without sounding it out, so I helped her sound it out right. She also memorized how she spelled pan, rod, and hat. I think that if she askes I will help her sound it out, if not I will let it be. I will post more as we go! 😉
May 17, 2011 @ 2:21 am
Congratulations! That’s such an exciting step. I have to hold myself back from correcting JR. I try to follow the Montessori principle as much as possible and not step in, but sometimes I doubt myself and wonder if I should step in and correct him. I think you do what feels right for you. 🙂