Friday, September 10, 2010

Word Families Website!

For reading and spelling, I have found that my oldest daughter really catches on quickly when she can categorize words that have similar sound endings. We are focusing on a word family each week to learn to recognize, read and spell the words.

I searched around for spelling books or other types of workbooks with word families and I couldn't find any that I liked. I searched the internet and couldn't find any good sites. But then I came upon a real gem. I love this site!

Reasons why I love Word Way Word Families:
*the pictures are adorable and have more than one picture for different meanings (hook and Captain hook, for example)
*there is a variety of fun activities to do: fill-in-the-blank, word search, name the picture, cut and paste, and other games.
*each word family includes a lot of words, including compound words (for example, for the /-ark/ family, they have remark and bookmark).
*they have a configuration station page. They use these in school to help kids picture how letters are below and above the main line. I think my oldest will really benefit from this and I didn't want to have to create it myself.

We are starting with r-controlled word families found here. As we complete a set of each word family a week (taking out some activities/worksheets I don't like as much), I am also planning on doing other interactive games with the word families. I am planning on building on the word families from prior weeks to review how to spell them as well. So, we will do these activities with the /ook/ family we did last week and the /ar/ family that we learned this week.

Here are the extra games my daughter can choose from to do with me:

*Mommy Matches: Make a matching sheet for Mommy with pictures
*Rainbow Letters: Write five words with three different colors
*Finger Paint Words: Use your finger to spell out five words with a bag full of paint
*Bend it: create five words using wiki sticks or pipe cleaners
*Playdough: create five words using playdough
*Run & Spell with Mom: Mommy gives you clues and you have to run in the other room and write the word correctly
*Silent Charades: act out each word and then the guesser has to write the word down correctly in order to guess.
*Dictation: Mom will dictate a sentence using words from different word families. You will write the sentence and draw a picture.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

The Power of Cereal Boxes

I just posted a fun new way to enjoy breakfast over at our Spanish teaching blog here. You can apply this to anything you are teaching your children. You could use it to reinforce things they have learned or motivate them to get interested in a new subject. Check it out!