by Donna | Mar 31, 2011
After a student is reading well (and sometimes even before if things are not quite taught in order), he will start learning to write. Remember this is not penmanship. Penmanship is penning words. Writing is putting words together to form sentences. Sentences are then put together to form paragraphs. And paragraphs are put together to design essays, reports, and stories.
A student can learn to write sentences either by writing them himself or by dictating to you and having you pen the sentences for him. Either way, here are some “sentence writing tips”:
- The CAVES acronym shows that a sentence must contain five parts: Capital; All makes sense; Verb; End mark; Subject. You can use this with your child as he writes sentences to evaluate if he truly has written sentences or just a group of words. (If he doesn’t fully understand the subject-verb part, ask him if his sentence has someone or something that it is about. And that someone or something doing or being something (verb). He doesn’t even have to know the terminology to see if the subject or verb is missing from a sentence.
- The other two “easily visible” part of CAVES—capital and end mark—can be spotted quickly by your student as you ask him for each one.
- The last one, All makes sense, is best discovered orally (both now and in writing for years to come). This is because what a person thinks he wrote (and reads silently) is not always what he truly wrote. Thus, if he reads something silently, he will often read in his head what he meant to write, not what he actually wrote. If he reads it aloud, he will “hear” it. (Incidentally, we use this “hear” your errors approach in our writing books for high schoolers as well—not just for individual sentence writing.)
- If he is learning to write sentences and feels at a loss as to what to write, point out the speaking-writing connection to him by dialoguing:
Student: I can’t think of anything to write.
Teacher/Parent: What did you do today?
Student: school
Teacher/Parent: Say it in a complete sentence with “I” as the subject.
Student: I went to school.
Write this down for him, showing him once again that the written word is simply the spoke word written down.
More homework help for early writing tomorrow. Happy learning!
by Donna | Mar 30, 2011
“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
As I stated earlier, sometimes I think we make Bible teaching with our children harder than it has to be. I am one who likes to read from devotional materials/character materials with my kids. My husband, on the other hand, can make a Bible lesson out of a pipe being put in the ground along the road, the orange of the sky in a summer evening, or clipping your fingernails! He can be deep, if needed, or he can be right to the point—this is what it means we should do.
I think we could all learn a lot from his approach. It just doesn’t have to be that hard. We can read. And we can talk. And we love our kids. Put all that together and morning devotions do not feel as difficult as they once did.
For many years, Ray did a morning devotion before work and I would do another later in the morning. Then we usually had evening devotions/family worship after dinner. Our morning devotions have varied over the years, but one thing that we have done more often than any other one book or method is that of simply reading and talking. (And now our schedule looks completely different with discussions and devotions with our teens while we drive; video lessons together on family night; Mom’s read aloud during the school week; worship together as we travel. Again, there’s not a right or wrong way!)
We did this “reading and talking” method extensively with the book of Proverbs—for years. Proverbs are wise words to live by—and a great way to start a family’s day. There are thirty-one—and correlate well with the days of the month. They are quick reads—great for mornings. And they give us instruction for how to live our lives—something adults and kids alike need to go into the day with.
Around Christmas and/or Easter, we would often focus on one of the Gospels. Other times we just picked a book of the Bible and made our way through it. We would sometimes use concordances, Bible dictionaries, and Bible handbooks, though we would often simply open the Bible and “read already.”
by Donna | Mar 29, 2011
“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
In keeping with a potential model in II Peter 1:5 as a basis for our how days would flow: “But also for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to your virtue, knowledge,” we started our kids’ days out with faith. This included private devotions, family devotions, read alouds, etc. through the years. Over the next couple of days I will give some ideas for this.
Today I will focus on Bible reading together in the mornings. I have expounded over the past year on much of the teaching that we received twenty-plus years ago from Gregg Harris (father of Josh Harris of “I Kissed Dating Good-Bye” and Alex and Brett Harris of “Do Hard Things”) in his “The Christian Homeschool Workshop.” One of the things that he taught us was to attach things that we want to implement in our homes to something that is already in our schedule, beginning with meal times.
We took his advice on this (and many other things) and came home and attached Bible teaching to just before breakfast—when we “rise up.” This has looked different all the time—some of the time Ray did it before work (and the kids went back to bed after he left!); some of the time I did it before breakfast; some of the time I did it during breakfast; some of the times we snuggled in my bed and read Bible and character materials before starting chores and the busy-ness of the day.
One of the downfalls of so many people out there telling us how to teach our children the Bible, how to have devotions, etc. is that it is often made to seem much more difficult than it is! (There are way more benefits, but this is definitely a downfall in our opinon.)
Tomorrow I will list many of the morning devotional ideas that we have used—some are as simple as reading a Proverb and talking!
by Donna | Mar 27, 2011
I don’t want to re-invent the wheel–and I also want to be sure to keep LL 365 short….or I might lose my privileges (or so my family says!)…so while I am going to spend a little time on helping your struggling reader in this month’s Homework Help, I am not going to spend too much time on reading in general.
So…I will direct you to our sister blog, Positive Parenting, a weekday parenting blog for Christian families. The link below will lead you to the first of three entries about creating a reading environment in your home for new readers. There are so many things that parents can do to create a learning environment–and build a love for reading, whether your children go to school or homeschool.
Blessings to your family as you seek to help your children in the areas of language arts, reading, and writing!
https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/09/day-244-creating-environment-conducive.html
by Donna | Mar 27, 2011
Welcome to Homework Help Week at Language Lady 365! We are going to interrupt our regular posts to provide help to parents (and teachers) in helping their children/students with language arts, reading, writing, and grammar homework.
Roadmap for the week:
1. Starting with some reading help! Reading is the inverse of spelling in the same way that addition is the inverse of subtraction. Build a strong reading background, helping your student to reach “reading fluency,” and a love for learning, and you will go a long way way in helping him or her in language arts in general–and all learning eventually.
2. Then sentence writing, including…
a. Penmanship vs writing
b. Beginning sentence writing
c. Copy work
d. Reading and writing connection
e. Writing “from his brain” and from a source for little ones
Thanks for joining us!
by Donna | Mar 25, 2011
“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
In keeping with a potential model in II Peter 1:5 as a basis for our how days would flow: “But also for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to your virtue, knowledge,” we started our kids’ days out with faith. This included private devotions, family devotions, read alouds, etc. through the years. Over the next couple of days I will give some ideas for this.
One of the things that I consider to have been successful in our home over the past twenty-eight years is the fact that, for the most part, we have had the same basic schedule during the first two hours of every week day, year round, our entire lives. When I say basic schedule, I am not talking about time schedules (i.e. 7:00-7:20 personal devotions; 7:20-7:45 family devotions; etc.) but rather I am describing a lifestyle of starting each day with faith and character—whether it is November, April, or July. I think we do kids a disservice (whether homeschooled or not) by allowing them to stay up until the wee hours of the night and sleep in til noon all summer. That is not real life at all—and promotes bad habits.
So, what is “faith teaching” in the morning?
It could mean, and has meant, many things for us, including, but not limited to:
1. Bible reading together
2. Praise music playing
3. Bible audios playing
4. Reading from a devotional or other book together
5. Reading from character books together
6. Each child reading his or her own devotional or Bible
7. Discussions, of course, discussions…
More on ideas for some of these later. Be sure to teach at the key times listed in Deuteronomy 6—um…all the time, that is!
