Just Another Day

Breakfast:
2 eggs, scrambled
2 mini sausage links, cut up
a sprinkle of cheddar
and
pomegranate, bluberry orange juice!

Breakfast!

Little Brother watched Word World on PBS this morning. The caveat to watching TV during a weekday was that he copy down some neat words that he saw/heard on the show. He copied ten neat words!
I put those words on index cards, and in the box for some school work. Now we have a five minute flash card lesson. Easy, and collaborative!

Collaborative vocabulary work

First Little Brother read each of the words aloud. We talked about silent e and how it works. I have taught both kids that vowels are very friendly and polite. When you see vowel friends together, neat things happen. Often vowel friends change each other to long vowel sounds, and because they are polite, they allow the first in line to speak loudest. So if a word such as "eat" comes along, we identify the vowel friends: E and A. E and A being together feel confident and speak loudly- that means long vowel sounds. But which vowel friend gets to speak? The first one in line. Remember? They are polite. So E gets to be a long E.

When it comes to silent e, which is easy to identify at the end of many words, we see the same thing. Silent e lets the other vowel friend speak confidently- a long vowel sound. However, silent e can only jump over so many consonants in order to get to his vowel friend. He can easily jump over on consonant. But two and three consonants is WAY harder to jump over. Silent e can only help his vowel friend become a confident long vowel sound if he can jump over one consonant. For example, "apple". Silent e cannot jump over L, and two Ps to get to A. So A stays a short vowel sound. But in "ape" silent e can easily jump over the one P to help A become a long vowel sound.

And of course, since we are talking English here, we discussed the reality of the "rare occasion of exception". Like "table". Some times it is frustrating seeing that the English language seems inconsistent. But really it allows for creativity. We are raised thinking outside the box in this country. Our own language is one of those enforcers that help us look for exceptions, creative solutions and as Sir Ken Robinson says, "divergent thinking".

After reading each card, Little Brother got some action in. I would place a card on the table and he would run and find that item in our home. Apple, bag, table, cave... Wait, cave? OK. So if he couldnt find that item, he would tell me what he knew about that item. There was one verb: ask. That he acted out.

Learning to weave friendship bracelets

utility at its best