A Christmas Carol, Gift of the Magi, If You’re Missing Baby Jesus, The Christmas Tapestry, The Burglar’s Christmas, The Birth, The Luke Chronicles, Cosmic Christmas.….these are just a few of our favorite “young teens and up” stories that we read or listen to at Christmas. Just because our kids are all over twelve doesn’t mean we have to stop reading aloud at Christmas time. (As a matter of fact, we still read a favorite Christmas short story on our family decorating night and another one on our family Christmas Eve—with twelve adult kids!)

(Check out my Annotated Christmas Book List with our favorites, descriptions, and ratings!)

Below are a couple of links to books I use and love. I am an affiliate for Amazon.com. If you click on the links below I will earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of this blog!

If you’ve gotten out of the habit of reading aloud and aren’t sure how the family will respond to asking them to join for Christmas stories, here are some suggestions:

1) Choose a very short story (like one included in this post!). Don’t go for long and drawn out when adding a new tradition.

2) Add it to something you already do. For example, add it to Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas morning rolls or driving to Grandma’s.

3) Choose something fun at first. The two stories included in this post are fun ones to begin with–a traditional, well-known story AND a contemporary spin-off of it. I think your family will like them!

4) Go back to an old favorite! Don’t be afraid to pull out an old picture book (see annotated list above!) that you all loved around the Christmas tree in years gone by! Christmas is a time for family, togetherness, and memory making. Bringing out an old favorite picture book (Tale of Three Trees or Jingle the Christmas Clown) might be the perfect way to start reading Christmas stories again!

5) Keep it short. When we are adding something to our holiday get-togethers, we start out short until we see how everybody likes it. I have several collections of Christmas stories with short stories. One of these might be perfect for your Christmas dinner reading!

6) Do a picture book for the littles–and watch the biggies gather around!

7) Put lovely Christmas coffee table books out during the holiday season! This will draw people into your read aloud time.

8) Use audio stories while your crew wraps gifts, decorates the tree, or makes goodies. This is a good way to bring Christmas stories back into the “older kids/adult kids” home. Don’t bombard them–just say, “Hey, I found this audio site to listen to stories. Let’s listen to our old favorite, Gift of the Magi, while we drop buckeyes. (Or get sentimental on them and bring out some Adventures in Odyssey Christmas episodes like “Pokenberry Christmas”!

I hope this week finds you celebrating the Christ child, creating new memories with your family, and reading stories! 😉

Read a version of the classic “Scrooge” and one of the modern “Scrooge” here or by tapping on the image below.

P.S. What is your favorite “older kids'” Christmas story? Did your crew like today’s “modern Scrooge” story?

The post Traditional and Contemporary Scrooge Stories (2 Free Christmas Stories!) appeared first on Character Ink.

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Aboard, about, above. Along, among, around….

Whether your kids sing them, recite them, chant them, rap them, or write them…prepositions are important.

I learned them in chant-like form when I was in school. However, I never knew WHY I needed to learn them.

My newest downloadable product will teach kids prepositions—in a way that focuses on the WHY, that is, what prepositions really do!

Before you get lost in the product description, click on the video to see me teaching about this amazing product:

Our kids (and we!) need to learn prepositions for a few important reasons:

(1) They are the beginning of prepositional phrases

(2) Prepositional phrases can be mentally eliminated from a sentence in order to get to the bare bones of the sentence…since the sentence’s main subject and main verb are not usually found in prepositional phrases

(3) Prepositional phrases are good to use as openers—especially lengthy ones—as they vary sentence structure and rhythm.

I’m all about songs, jingles, rhymes, recitation, and mnemonics for learning parts of speech (and really anything).

However, when prepositions are learned in songs or recitations, the real reasons for prepositions are overlooked. (Not to mention that they learn about thirty of the over two hundred prepositions….not enough memorized preps to adequately recognize them in sentences and use them for sentence openers!)

That is, students can chant a long list of words, but they do not know how to use them.

Enter my Preposition Practice Packet! I use tricks. I use check sentences. I even use toys (“Preposition Practice Pals”!) to teach prepositions (and practice them).

But all of the methods within this Preposition Practice Packet have one thing in common: they focus on the PURPOSE of the preposition—to show spatial relationships or time.

This 80 page practice packet has fifteen lessons (with student assignments) introducing prepositions in a systematic order: initial letter, with the practice pal, as opposites, as synonyms, as compound words, and more.

When you use this packet, your student will learn prepositions by the boatload—but they will also learn them for their purpose.

Note: If you like the Preposition Practice Packet, you will love the Think Fast Grammar Quiz and Answer Key!

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I am finished with the second book/download in the “Letters and Sound” series (only two more to go!). And this one is probably the most important of the four. Yes, the ABC Letters and Picture Cards are valuable for learning clue words for each letter (the first step in learning each letter’s sound) and are amazing for practice activities and games. And yes, the upcoming Little Rhyming ABC Books are tons of fun (and very catchy!). However, this packet/book will have your students singing the sounds of each letter of the alphabet in no time—in a pain-free, multi-sensory manner.

Children remember words of songs. They remember rhymes and mnemonics. They remember jingles and ditties. Thus, a natural way for littles to learn their beginning letter sounds is through one of these means. Enter “The ABC Sounds Song Packet.”

I am so excited to be developing these products now (my first preschool products after writing sixty books for second through twelfth grade students over the past fifteen years!)—as my first grandchild is turning two soon. It won’t be long and Jason and Nonna will be singing these songs together as he learns his letters and sounds! 🙂

In a nutshell, this packet contains 8.5 x 11 inch colored “posters” of each of the twenty-­‐six
letters of the alphabet (plus five additional ones) in song to the tune of “Mary Had a Little
Lamb.” (It actually includes thirty-­‐three posters; see the full explanation of the why’s and how’s of the “Letters and Sounds” program here.)

Each song is the same (same wording, phrasing, and line breaks) as the other. The only differences
among the song sheets are in the letter and the words/picture clues that begin with that letter.

Here is what you get:

1. Three ABC posters with the alphabet laid out in the order and with the line breaks in the same
manner it is sung in the “original” ABC song. (See “Tips for Using the ABC Sound Songs” in the full description at one of my stores: CurrClick, Teachers Pay Teachers, or Teacher’s Notebook.)

2. Twenty-­‐six “regular” letter posters-­‐-­‐the “regular” twenty-­‐six letters of the alphabet, one on each poster, with each letter ’s own “song” with the beginning sound. (See “What Makes This Packet Unique” here!)

3. Five“additional” letter posters—the five long vowels (the original five vowels in the first
twenty-­‐six letters contain the short vowel sounds) and the soft sounds of c (suh) and g (juh).

You can see samples of the songs here or here or here! But watch out….you will never sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” the old way again!

The post Product Highlight: The ABC Sounds Song Packet appeared first on Character Ink.

Fifteen years ago I began writing my complete language arts program for second through twelfth grade students (what is now Character Quality Language Arts, CQLA). I based that program, loosely, on six programs (language arts, editing, writing, vocabulary, spelling, etc., programs) that I had been using for a dozen years with my older children. I wanted to take all of the best “part language arts” books and put them together in one. And I did that!

One of the programs I had used with my kids was a spelling classification book, a book in which students record their spelling words on pages that are labeled with the various word families and other commonalities. I loved this program and had used it in conjunction with the other aforementioned books. When I created my complete language arts program, I created a book similar to the one I had used—with several changes. For one thing, mine was longer and more detailed. I found myself having to add columns and pages too often. Additionally, I didn’t feel that the book that I had used had enough explanation of the various sounds (for those using it with random spelling lists, I thought it should give more “teaching” on the sounds and spelling patterns).

Also, I had, had some success using that spelling categorization system with my emerging reader (who also enjoyed writing/penning). Therefore, I knew that I wanted my Spelling Notebook to go through all of the sounds/patterns/word families that a new reader would encounter (in the order they are usually taught) so that students could use it to record words as they learned sounds for reading.

So I knew what I wanted for spelling to go with CQLA right away. And The Spelling Notebook was created.

Fast forward fifteen years later. The Spelling Notebook is still available from Character Ink (our small press publishing company) and Rainbow Resource Center. This summer my graphic designer and I put a new cover on it and made it into a download that public, private, and homeschools could download for their students so that even more kids could benefit from this systematic resource. (To see how to use this book, check out this demo video!)

This product can be purchased in black and white (with a colored cover) with heavy paper for the pages (for years of use by the same student). (Call 260-433-4365 to order.) It can also be purchased as a download from Teachers Pay Teachers, Teacher’s Notebook, and CurrClick. For more information, continue reading the forward of The Spelling Notebook below.

FROM THE FORWARD OF THE SPELLING NOTEBOOK

This Spelling Notebook was designed to be used to further cement spelling learning by providing “learning hooks” upon which to base the student’s spelling experiences. It uses a word family/phonetic approach to help students classify words with spelling commonalities together. This gives them the advantage of using prior spelling knowledge (previously recorded words and families) along with new spelling words.

Spelling Uses

The Spelling Notebook may be used in two different manners to assist in spelling learning:
1. Students record their new spelling words (already based on spelling commonalities) onto the proper SN page.
2. Students record misspelled words from their essays, spelling tests, and dictation quizzes onto the corresponding SN page.

These two methods are as follows:

1. Recording Weekly Spelling Words—

a. After students copy the spelling words in their weekly lesson, the teacher should tell him which page (or pages) he will need to record that week’s words.

b. The student should turn to the indicated pages in his SN. There, he will find columns of lines with a word above each column.

c. He should record each spelling word from his weekly list on the pages indicated beneath the spelling pattern that each word follows.

d. For example, if he is working on the ei and ie spelling patterns in his weekly lesson, he will turn to the SN pages given. He will then place the words from his spelling lesson in the correct columns:

i. Cei—In this column, he will place the words receive, conceive, and perceive.
ii. Ie—In this column, he will place the words believe, relieve, and belief.
iii. Ei says ay—In this column, he will place the words vein, rein, and veil.

2. Recording Misspelled Words—

a. In this approach, the teacher chooses words that the student misspelled during his weekly dictation quiz, spelling test, and essay/report. (This may be three or four words or ten words, depending on his skill level and how many of the spelling words he will be working on from the weekly spelling lesson.)

b. The most productive way to use these spelling words is for the teacher to analyze the spelling problem of each word with the student. For example, if the student spelled happy with only one p—hapy, she would point out what the spelling error was. (The student failed to double the consonant in a two syllable-first vowel-short word.)

c. The student and teacher would then look up this rule in the SN and the student would record the word in the correct column of the corresponding page.

d. Obviously, when a student misspells a word, he may just copy that word and study it for the next week. This is fine, too; however, if the student actually has experiences with the spelling problem (the exact part of the word he misspelled) and copies it over in the SN with words containing that same spelling, the spelling rule will be further cemented in the student’s mind.

For Reading Instruction

The SN is a valuable tool for emerging readers who enjoy writing. As each word family is studied/learned through any word-family-approach phonics program, have your student write the words that he or she has learned to read on the coordinating pages under the correct word family.

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