[blparent] spelling ideas

[dawn stumpner]

Yes, I think Judy's idea about finding words with the same 
pattern is great.  Start with easy stuff that rhymes and just 
replace one letter at a time.  Kind of like on Electric Company, 
if you've ever seen the part where they have part of a word 
coming out of one person's mouth and part out of the other, and 
they pronounce the sounds and put them together to make 
similar-sounding words: c ...' an ...'' can.  f ...' an ...' fan.  
etc.  etc.  The idea about doing a somersault while spelling is 
great too, because especially with young kids, the more physical 
or engaging an activity is, the more chance there is of putting 
it into long-term memory.  She could try yelling the letters, 
whispering the letters, jumping rope to the letters, hopping to 
them, bunny-hopping to them, clapping, etc.  Maybe you could use 
refrigerator magnet letters or braille Scrabble letters to play 
making short sound-alike words.  To get used to sounds, you could 
play finding things that have a certain sound in them when you're 
out walking or in the house, like "I spy." If you want to 
practice remembering that a often has a sound like in "Dan," you 
could give some examples, and then she could point out things she 
sees with this sound on walks like a can, a man, an ant, etc.  
The less stress she has "working" on spelling and the more like 
play it is, the more she'll stick with it and remember stuff, so 
it would be great if the teacher is onboard too and isn't sending 
too many words that are different.  However, I know that a lot of 
teachers in early grades want kids to remember spellings of 
short, common "sight" words that occur frequently in reading like 
"the," "in," "that," etc.  These are useful ones for kids to know 
so they don't stop and try to sound out weird words like "the" 
that don't sound like they look, but you can talk with the 
teacher about your ideas and come up with a plan together.  
She'll get it!
    Dawn