Monday, April 03, 2006
The Spelling Game
The kids love sitting around the dinner table practicing their spelling. Unfortunately, they can't spell their way out of a paper bag! Not all of them, mind you. Jonny enjoyed spelling several letters and words such as TV and DVD. And oddly enough, Megan can spell. She doesn't own enough "rules" to spell properly all the time, but she never misses a sound and always comes up with something phonetically appropriate. I credit this to our use of a movable alphabet. Every day, before her reading lesson, she's practiced building words. I printed out a few more sheets of letters yesterday, and I'm going to start the elder girls on this, too, and have them write the words they build in a notebook. It isn't exactly the The Writing Road to Reading method, but it's a reasonable twist, I think. And it's more fun. Motivated kids learn faster.
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2 comments:
You can play the Algebra game too. (Too many people ignore math when they teach young children.) "I'm thinking of a number that when I add 2, I get 10. What's the number?" for starters. Simple, yet it teaches the idea of undoing an operation to arrive at the solution. Then, more advanced: "I'm thinking of a number that when you multiply by 2 and then add 3 you get 15." Or even more advanced: "I'm thinking of a number that when you subtract 4, then multiply by 7, then add 2 you get 30." You can throw in squaring and all sorts of other stuff as they get older.
You can also play the "function machine" game. Give them a list of number pairs that represent inputs and outputs. For example, 2, 4 and 3, 6 and 5, 10. What's the rule for changing the input into the output?
Function machines are usually begun around 4th grade, when children's minds are a bit more capable of the abstract thinking needed to solve these puzzles. Of course, some children are not ready until 5th or 6th grade.
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