My Young Authors

My kids enjoy writing their own stories. Sometimes they will collaborate on this, but often they will work alone. They have written dozens of chapters, not sure that any of them have ever finished a "book" yet.

I encourage their writing without burdening them with any of the mechanics of grammar or spelling. I figure this stretches their creativity. We can always go to http://www.time4writing.com/ to work on the mechanics. I just want them to have a love for writing as I do.

Who knows? Maybe some day their stories will join the ranks of other famous homeschool authors!

Mom, How do you spell?

"Moooom! How do you spell...?" Do you hear this in your house? I do on almost a daily basis. I usually have them try to spell the word on their own before helping them. I will ask them, "How do you think it's spelled?"

By doing this I feel that I'm causing them to think for themselves rather than just looking to someone else for a quick answer. I'm also helping them to continue building their phonemic awareness. We often think that this skill is only for younger elementary children. I think that we all need to continue building this skill in order to be a great speller and reader.

My kids are great readers, but they struggle with their spelling. One more great reason for me to make them try to figure out how to spell words on their own. Another tool that we utilize in our homeschool is www.spellingcity.com. There are games and other resources to help kids stretch their spelling muscles.

So the next time you hear one of you kids ask, "How do you spell...?" Ask them, "How do YOU think it's spelled??"

Playing with Words

Learning about compound words can be lots of fun if approached in the right way. You may be surprised to find that your older kids might not know what a compound word is. My 13 year old asked me this morning what they were. I told him that they are basically two words stuck together.

There are tons of ways to teach about them. One of the ways I thought of is to challenge your kids to find as many compound words as they can in one room of your house. Perhaps it's your kitchen. Some of the words could be cupboard, tabletop, microwave...oh, wait microwave is not compound. This can open the door to teach about prefixes and suffixes. They can learn about root words and how they effect the meaning of different words.

Work, work, work!

It seems that I just keep getting busier and busier. Homeschool, housework, computer work, crochet work. Yes, I did say crochet WORK. I have 2 big crochet orders! One is for 3 sets of Star Wars Amigurumi characters. The other is for 3 afghans. Thankfully the afghans don't have to be done before Christmas.

With all this work, it would be tempting for me to look into umbrella schools for my kids. They would take charge of assigning my kids all their schoolwork and keep all the records. But why should I do that when I have Time4Learning? They already keep all the records for me!

I'm not the only one who has been busy, busy, busy! I'm praying that MyHero will be able to get the dishwasher hooked up and running this weekend. It would be soo wonderful to have my kitchen back again!!

For those of you who follow me, I had my kitchen back for a while. But then we decided that we wanted to take this opportunity to install a dishwasher. We have never had a dishwasher in the 11 years we have lived in this house. That meant that we had to save up for one.

We finally got the dishwasher. Now, MyHero has to brave the attic to install a dedicated circuit for the dishwasher. That's not as easy as it sounds. We do not have a walk in attic and we live in FL. Add to this that he's been working 2 jobs, 3 if you count working on the kitchen. Most weeknights, if he doesn't have to go to his second job, I just don't have the heart to ask him to work on the kitchen.


Looks like both MyHero and I will be busy for quite some time yet!