Today, Youngling had a writing assignment of two words. Her words for the day were "DOG" and "CAT", because she wanted to learn about something concerning animals today. Later this evening, we will be reading her new library book that is about butterflies.
Handwriting:
Youngling is doing very well with her handwriting. Her "D" still looks a little bit like an "O", but she is getting better each time she writes. Youngling's "G" is very good, especially since it is such a hard letter for her to write. Still, they are easily read.
I think that I have struck gold, in changing the pages that I make for Youngling to write on. Instead of using lined paper, we have switched to blank pages. I have taken to drawing rectangles for her to write her words inside, and she is finding it much easier to control her letter size. With the boxes, she is able to keep her letters roughly the same size.
Reading:
Today, I introduced Youngling to the word "NAME", by giving her a place at the top of the page to write her name, and labeling the line. I am using that word as a way to explain to her the different sounds that a vowel can make, and how having an "E" at the end of the word can change the vowel sound. She doesn't quite seem to have caught on yet, but it doesn't matter. She is only becoming aquainted with the idea right now.
After finishing her writing pages, I gave Youngling a little reading test. I wanted to make sure that she understood what she was writing, and not just copying letters. So, I took the words "DOG", "CAT", "DADDY", and "MOMMY", and made a ten point word list for her. At each word, I used a piece of paper to block the other words, to help her focus. While the words were written randomly, and she has not worked on "Mommy" and "Daddy" recently, she was able to spell each word correctly, and tell me what word it was. She did exceptionally well.
Youngling seemed to enjoy her experience, and was very happy to have "done school". (it helps that she had asked in the first place. lol) I was able to keep the lesson relatively short, at approximately 20 minutes. Her interest was held through all three exercises, and she never became bored.
