Entries Tagged 'Elementary Ages' ↓

The Confusing World of Homophones

“If your going too the movies, make sure you don’t by to many sweets.”

Your/you’re. By/buy. To/too/two. These often-confusing (and frequently misused) words are called homophones—words that sound the same but are spelled differently.

While the difference between its and it’s may not seem like a big deal to some, using these two little words—or any homophone—incorrectly can make us seem ignorant and uneducated. You see, whether or not they mean to, people often form first impressions simply by reading our writing. Isn’t this why our shelves brim with English references, grammar programs, and spelling books? It IS important to us that our children write as accurately as possible.

It’s never too late to teach the rules to your kids. And if you didn’t quite grasp these concepts during your own school days, it’s not too late to learn or re-learn the rules yourself.

All About Homophones

All About Homophones is an exciting new curriculum that will unlock your children’s understanding of these confusing word sets. Author Marie Rippel says:

“Teaching homophones can be tough! They sound the same, but they aren’t spelled the same, and they don’t mean the same thing . . . [All About Homophones] is a complete teaching tool kit that helps you demystify homophones and homonyms for students. They’ll learn and master spelling easily through interesting worksheets and games they love to play.”

One Book, Multiple Grades

Take time to teach your children about homophones so they’ll learn to correctly spell and use these word sets.

Because the worksheets are divided into sections by grade level, All About Homophones is perfect for teaching multple grades. One book includes reproducible worksheets for grades one through eight, making the program budget friendly too.

Lessons You’ll Love

The book includes a comprehensive list of common homophones and recommends which grade to introduce each one. And All About Homophones offers a variety of activities that appeals to different learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

These aren’t your ordinary dull worksheets! Whimsical illustrations and engaging activities maintain your children’s interest while helping them make sense of each new set of words. Here are some of the ways your children will learn about homophones:

• Homophone Worksheets to reinforce reading and writing.
• Graphic Organizers to help teach the meanings of each set of words.
• Crossword Puzzles, Riddles, and Tongue Twisters to reinforce with fun and humor.
• Card Games with cards and instructions for playing several different games.
• Student Record Sheets
• List of Homophones
• List of Homophone-rich Books to read with your children

Click here to see sample pages from All About Homophones.

Now in the WriteShop Store

We’re always looking for top-notch products that reinforce writing, grammar, and spelling, so we’re excited to announce that All About Homophones is now in stock in the WriteShop store. Stop in and check out this great new resource. Teaching your children to use homophones correctly is one of the best gifts you can give them. Order yours today! 

Homophone Humor

If I haven’t yet convinced you of the importance of teaching homophones—or if you think your children can simply trust their spell-check to correct these troublesome words, you’ll want to read Owed to the Spell Checker. One of my favorite examples of homophone confusion, this humorous poem illustrates just how easy it is to mix up words that have similar sounds.

“Descriptive writing is an art form. It’s painting a word picture so that the reader ’sees’ exactly what you are describing.”

~Brenda Covert

What’s the big deal about writing descriptively? For one thing, it’s much more than page-filling fluff. Descriptive writing imprints images into the reader’s mind, making you feel as though you’re “right there.” It‘s all about engaging the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to transport the reader and stir emotion. By choosing vivid details and colorful words, good writers bring objects, people, places, and events to life. Instead of merely telling you what they see, they use their words to show you.

Writers use this powerful method to make their pieces memorable—even brilliant—rather than dry and boring. In many ways, description is the most important kind of writing you can teach your children because it supports other reasons for writing such as storytelling, informative reports, or persuasion.

So even if your child never aspires to write stories or poetry, description is a wonderful skill to develop, for without it, all other writing falls flat.

Describing a Place

Vivid writing is especially important when describing a place—whether to describe a vista for a travel guide or flesh out a scene in a novel. 

Master storyteller Charles Dickens was also a master of using description to create a particular mood or idea.

It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, arid vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. ~Charles Dickens, Hard Times

But your child doesn’t have to be a Dickens to add color, depth, and interest to his writing. Here, a ninth grader draws on all five senses to describe a place and set an effective mood.

Moist and salty, a chilly breeze blows in across the swells, bringing with it the pungent smells of seaweed and fish and making me pull my jacket a little closer. Sea spray transforms into fiery prisms as the waves splash against the shore, catch the last golden rays of sun, and toss them up like liquid crystals.

With a few tips and tools, your child can effectively describe a  place too.

Suppose he’s planning to describe a desert. He’ll need to describe basic desert features, of course: sand, rock, hills, and dunes. But deserts aren’t all alike, so his word choices will need to reflect the kind of desert he wants to write about. For example, if he chooses a desert in the southwestern United States, he’ll probably describe plants such as sagebrush, Joshua trees, yuccas, or saguaro cacti.

But if he’s writing about an oasis in the Sahara Desert, where vegetation is much different, he would instead describe date palms, oleanders, acacia trees, succulents, and desert grasses. His description of either desert scene will spring to life as he describes these places with rich and appropriate details.

Finding Vocabulary to Describe a Place

How do you help your child study his subject and choose vivid words that make his writing sparkle? Whether he decides to write about a desert, city, rainforest, or pond, these ideas will help him find words that will form the foundation of his descriptive piece, narrative story, or report.

Using a Search Engine

Search engines such as Google makes a great resource for inspiration. In addition to collecting general terms about the location’s flora and fauna (the desert, for example), he’ll also find concrete, specific nouns and adjectives that will add color to his writing. Suggest that he begin his search by looking up terms like these:

• desert landscape
• desert features
• desert climate
• desert plants
• desert animals
• desert description

What if your child wants to describe a city instead of a desert? City words are trickier to find, and he may have to hunt more. Try some of these search terms:

• describe city sights
• describe Chicago, describe Pittsburgh, etc.
• “describe downtown” (use quotes)

Using Other Sources

While search engines can lead you to a wealth of information, don’t discount the value of print media such as magazines and books, or digital media such as TV documentaries or DVDs about the subject.

If possible, visit the place in person. But if not, can you explore a spot with similar features? Many children are visual and tactile learners. If your child wants to describe what a sidewalk looks like, how about taking him outside to explore the sidewalk on your street? It will help him describe the texture, color, and appearance of a city sidewalk, even if you live in a suburb.

Expanding Vocabulary

As your child searches the Internet, ask him to keep an eye out for adjectives that describe desert or city features (or whatever place he wants to write about). Encourage him to come up with words on his own, but also to watch for words he comes across in articles or photo captions.

If he doesn’t understand some of the words, pull out the dictionary and make it a teaching moment! And show him how to use a thesaurus (we love The Synonym Finder) to find other words that say the same thing. Both of these exercises will help his vocabulary to grow.

Some Desert Adjectives

Desert: harsh, dry, arid, sparse, severe, hot
Rock: sharp, rough, jagged, angular
Grasses: windblown, bent, dry, pale green, brown
Sand: coarse, fine, glittering, shifting, rippling, sifting, white, golden
Sky: pale, intense, cloudless, azure, purple, crimson
Cactus: tall, short, squatty, spiny, prickly, thorny
Date palm: tall, bent, leather (leaves), frayed (leaves)

Some City Adjectives

City: active, bustling, noisy, busy, clean, dirty, windy
Traffic: loud, congested, snarled
Buildings: old, shabby, rundown, crumbling,  modern, futuristic, sleek, towering, squat
Buildings (walls): brick, stone, marble, glass, steel, graffiti-covered
Monuments, statues: stone, copper, carved, ancient, moss-covered, faded, green, bronze
Sidewalk: concrete, cement, slick, cracked, tidy, littered, swept
Paint: fresh, weathered, peeling
Signs: neon, weathered, worn, bright, welcoming, flashing
Buses, cars, taxis: belching, crawling, speeding, honking, waiting, screeching
People: hurried, bundled, smiling, frowning, eager, rushed

Use these suggestions to encourage your child come up with ideas for describing his own place. You’ll both discover that hunting for words can become a favorite pre-writing game! And as your child dabbles more and more with descriptive writing, I’m confident his words will soon begin to “show” more and “tell” less.

. . . . .

Do you struggle with teaching and grading writing? Does your child’s writing need a boost? Consider adding WriteShop to your curriculum choices for this school year!

The first seven lessons of WriteShop I specifically teach your teen descriptive writing. This important skill is then practiced in the remaining informative and narrative writing lessons. In addition, WriteShop teaches—and offers practice in using—a wide array of sentence variations that help to enhance a student’s paper with fresh style and vigor. When combined with strong, dynamic word choices, sentence variations give dull writing new life.

For younger children, WriteShop Primary introduces K-3rd graders to activities that widen their writing vocabulary. Book C contains three  specific descriptive writing lessons.

For more information, visit our website at http://www.writeshop.com/.

Don’t you just love watching your kids develop a sense of humor? I get such a kick out of the things my grandchildren find funny. I wish I could bottle up every silly story, giggle, and laugh and save them for a rainy day!

Once children reach age six or seven, they’re ready to start having fun with humor in their writing. Even if your child is a bit on the serious side, here’s a brainstorming activity designed to help kids think about ideas for writing a funny story.

Advance Prep

Read some funny picture books together. Depending on your child’s age, you can find some great funny-bone ticklers out there!

Since your goal is simply to introduce humor in writing, use this time to read short books with simple yet humorous themes, even if your child’s reading level is more advanced. Here are a few suggestions:

• Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type
• Amelia Bedelia books 
• Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
• The Duchess Bakes a Cake

Prepare a blank comic strip for your child to fill in by dividing a piece of computer paper into six equal blank squares to resemble a comic strip. Make the squares as large as possible, perhaps making two rows of three.

Draw a simple story web on a sheet of paper. Draw a circle in the middle and six lines extending out from the circle to resemble a web.

Brainstorm for a Humorous Story

If your child is not familiar with comic strips, show her some examples from the newspaper or www.comics.com.

1. Choose a main character. Ask your child to choose a main character for her funny story (animals, birds, or dinosaurs make good subjects).

2. Think of a story idea that features the main character. If your child can’t decide on an original funny story idea, encourage her to use an idea from a comic or humorous story she already knows.

3. Fill in the story web.

• Write the topic in the center circle of the story web.
• Write the details of the story on the story web. Gently prompt her to suggest the details by asking:

Who is the main character of this story?
What happened in the beginning of the story?
What happened next?
Tell me something really funny that happened.
How did the story end?

• Write down ideas for a title on the story web.

Draw the Comic Strip

Your child will not need to do any writing for this activity.

• Give her the blank comic strip you prepared. Ask her to draw one picture in each frame using the details from the story web.
• Since this is the brainstorming stage, discourage her from drawing the pictures in detail. Simple stick figures are best.

 .  .  .  .  .

This is just one of the many fun and creative projects and activities WriteShop Primary uses to reinforce simple writing skills at the primary level. In Book B, children learn to write a funny story using the steps of the writing process, beginning with pre-writing and brainstorming and ending with a published final draft.

1. Break Free from Writer’s Block

“As a writer, I want to choose the exact right words for my story. But when I’m stuck, I try to ask myself, What do I REALLY want to tell the readers? Instead of worrying about perfect sentences, I jot down ideas, phrases, the points I think are most important and also things I think are cool or surprising. Once I have notes on paper, it’s a lot easier for me to figure out how I want to tell the story.” ~David Bjerklie, senior science reporter at TIME magazine

2. Use “To Be” Verbs Sparingly

“‘No more than one to-be verb per paragraph’ will force students to avoid passive voice and strengthen nouns and verbs.” ~Mark Pennington, reading specialist

3. Use Transition Words

“Young writers often get into trouble when going from one idea to the next. Without transitions, a reader is likely to get lost or disinterested. Each paragraph, like the overall body of the essay, needs a beginning, middle and an end.

“Start off with simple transitional phrases. Sometimes one or two words will adequately signify the essay’s development. Words such as ‘therefore’ and ‘finally’ signal to the reader that the essay’s message is progressing. As a test, reread each paragraph, and if they make sense standing on their own, they probably incorporate good transitions. If not, add a sentence introducing a new idea.” ~Sylvan Learning Online

4. Watch out for Contractions and Apostrophes

People often mix their and they’re, its and it’s, your and you’re and so on. If there is something that can hurt the credibility of your text, it is a similar mistake. Also, remember that the apostrophe is never used to form plurals.” ~Sharon at DailyWritingTips.com

5. Edit and Revise Your Writing

“Revise and rewrite. Improvement is always possible.” ~Bob Brooke, author

I’ve been thinking about the importance of giving our kids a wider audience for their writing. After all, if they only write for an audience of one—whether parent or teacher—they tend to write for his or her benefit alone.

But if we want our students’ writing to improve, shouldn’t we also encourage them to find opportunities to share their stories, poems, and essays with someone other than Mom?

Benefits of a Wider Audience

Having an audience takes your child beyond the point of writing for a grade. So why not start thinking of ways to broaden his understanding of what an audience can be?

Help him experience how others can find joy in reading his work. He’ll be rewarded with increased joy and confidence, and I think you’ll begin to see his writing blossom as he takes more pride in his efforts.

Think Inside—and Outside—the Box

When Debbie and I taught WriteShop classes, we always ended the year with a parent tea. The students recited poetry, and we passed out class anthologies. As the children pored over the stories and poems in the spiral-bound booklets, it was clear how much they enjoyed seeing their works in print.

But an anthology is just one of many ways to publish. I want to challenge you to think outside the box, too! Here are some other suggestions for expanding your kids’ writing audience or showcasing their writing projects.

• Turning writing assignments into art projects or mini books to share with others
• Mailing or emailing final drafts to grandparents
• Newsletters or anthologies (think homeschool support group or co-op class)
• Writing contests
• Student readings for a parent night 
• Audio and video productions of student essays
• Your personal or family blog, such as Titanium Woman
• Your child’s own writing blog, like Justine’s Awesome Writing Assignments and Kaja Wrote

So help your children look for new ways to share their work with others. Once their writing pieces get published—whether in traditional or nontraditional ways—they’ll begin to grasp what it really means to be an author! 

Share a comment: What are some things you do to give your children’s writing a bigger audience?

No matter the curriculum, whether math, penmanship, or writing, picking the best starting level for your child can challenge the most seasoned homeschooler—especially when said child doesn’t exactly fit a grade-specific mold.

WriteShop Primary is no exception—you may need more help picking a starting level than the placement chart offers. The following lists identify specific skills within a range of ages, making it easier for you to choose the very best place to begin the program. 

Start with Book A if your 5- to 7-year-old is not yet able to:

• Plan a story before writing it.
• Use a story web to organize information.
• Identify beginning, middle, and end in a story.
• Choose an appropriate title.
• Think of simple ways to improve a story.
• Read and write color words.
• Complete predictable sentence starters.
• Recognize words that rhyme.
• Identify and use punctuation marks at the end of a sentence.
• Begin a sentence with a capital letter.

WriteShop Primary Book A (print version)
WriteShop Primary Book A (e-book version)

Start with Book B if your 6- to 10-year-old is not yet able to:

• Use graphic organizers to plan a story.
• Include a beginning, middle, and end in his story.
• Figure out how to add more details to a story.
• Organize a story to include a problem and its solution.
• Write or dictate a friendly letter.
• Write or dictate about something that has happened to him.
• Retell nursery rhymes and fairy tales in his own words.
• Identify or use paragraph form and indentation.
• Identify the parts of a friendly letter.
• Identify words that rhyme.
• Use standard spelling tools such as a dictionary.
• Choose story endings.

WriteShop Primary Book B (print version)
WriteShop Primary Book B (e-book version)

Start with Book C if your 7- to 11-year-old is not yet able to:

• Plan the main ingredients of a story before beginning to write.
• Ask who, what, when, where, and why? in order to add story details.
• Organize story details.
• Write entries in a personal journal.
• Use descriptive words in his writing.
• Write a short nonfiction article.
• Summarize the contents of familiar books.
• Collect research facts about a specific topic.
• Write a simple, short report with introduction, body, and closing.
• Use standard spelling.
• Check his own work for correct spelling and punctuation.

WriteShop Primary Book C (print version)
WriteShop Primary Book C (e-book version)

A Quick Word about Copywork

I’d like to suggest a new way to incorporate copywork into your schooling. In a future blog article, I’ll take time to extol the virtues of copywork, which I think is valuable for pre-writers to 14-year-olds (or thereabouts). But in a nutshell, copying:

• Teaches children a number of foundational writing, grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills.
• Helps them pay attention to detail.
• Offers penmanship practice.
• Introduces them to passages of quality literature.

That’s the Reader’s Digest version! For the time being, you can find a more detailed explanation here: An Introduction to Copywork

A Personalized Recipe Box

OK, so are you ready for a super-fun copywork activity for the junior chefs in your family? Your children won’t be delving into literature, but this little exercise does help fulfill the first three points above.

When I was eleven, I started my own recipe collection in my seventh-grade home economics class—pancakes, Dutchess Spice Cake, and caramel toast were three of my first cards—and I’ve been collecting recipes ever since!

Your children can embark on this journey too. Here’s how:

1. Buy them a set of cute recipe cards, or print some out on card stock. There are tons of free printables available in patterns to suit both boys and girls.
2. Sit them down with your own recipes and cookbooks, using sticky notes to mark your children’s personal favorites as well as special family recipes. Make sure to include several simple recipes they can prepare themselves.
3. Provide pens or pencils and let the copying begin.

Younger, slower, or reluctant writers should have a time limit—perhaps five to ten minutes, depending on the child, but in general, keep this exercise to 20 minutes or less. Motivated writers will have so much fun that they may use this “writing” time as an excuse to avoid other schoolwork, so they’ll benefit from a timer as well.

As your children’s assortment of recipe cards grows, reward them with recipe dividers and a personalized file box to hold their collection.

They’ll treasure it someday, just as I treasure mine!

Writing includes three main elements: content, style, and mechanics. The content, of course, is the heart of the composition—the story, main message, or thesis. Style is the way the writer communicates the content through word choice, sentence variation, etc. Mechanics includes all those tricky little rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling that govern how the words actually appear on paper.

Mechanical Errors Make the Most Noise

When it comes to giving our children feedback on their papers, many of us are in a muddle. Sometimes the “noise” of a zillion grammatical errors drowns out the content as we zoom in on each misspelled word and sentence fragment. But is that the place to start? What should be our focus? You’ve probably asked yourself these very questions:

• Isn’t mechanics an important part of writing?
• Should I allow inventive spelling, or insist that every word is spelled properly?
• Should I focus on the main content, or should I address grammar and punctuation errors too?
• How do I help my kids fine-tune their writing if I don’t point out all the mistakes?

It’s Like Walking a Tightrope

Just as we can correctly—or incorrectly—judge a person’s character based on outward appearance, it’s easy to judge a piece of writing by the mechanical errors we see. We don’t mean for them to interfere with our enjoyment of the content, but typically, they do.

The whole editing thing is like walking a tightrope, isn’t it? We don’t want to discourage our children from spilling their ideas onto paper, for the freedom of doing so sparks in them a love for writing. But for fear of dousing that fire, some of us sway too far to the left and never utter a word about grammar or spelling.

And tipping too far to the right are the parents who are so caught up in the glare of dangling participles and grave misspellings that we run amok with our red pens—and completely miss the heart of the child’s writing.

We really can address content, style, and mechanics without throwing our tenderhearted kiddos to the lions. The trick to finding the balance is remaining as objective as possible and cushioning our suggestions with praise.

For the rough draft, focus mainly on content. Do ideas make sense? Do they flow well? Is there enough information and/or detail? Then, once the story or essay or paragraph is organized and more rounded out, we can deal with any grammar, spelling, and punctuation issues that remain.

Photo by Joar E.M. Klette. Used by permission. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Most children are natural-born storytellers. They may not have much love for pencil and paper, but it’s not unusual for them to talk your ear off as they share about their day or weave a make-believe story about a blue bird named Monkey George who flew off to buy Band-Aids because he hurt his foot.

Your littles are learning—learning to use their ever-expanding vocabulary, hold pencils properly, and write letters, words, and simple sentences. They’re figuring out that there’s a relationship between spoken and written words.

Whether you choose to use an actual writing curriculum for kindergarten, first, or second grade, or just forge ahead on your own, there are simple activities you can do to foster a love of words and writing in your younger children. Here are three fun ones to get you started!

Write Little Notes

I still remember those sticky, wrinkled, crayon-scribbled notes my children used to write:  Deer mom I louv you so so much! 

To their delight, sometimes I’d stick a note under a pillow or in a pocket for them to find in return. Kids love getting those notes! Write them on index cards, scraps of notebook paper. or hearts cut from colored card stock. The medium doesn’t matter! Roll up flimsy notes and tie them with a piece of string or yarn and hide them in a pajama drawer. Slip sturdy flat ones under a door, into a coat pocket or library book, or under a dinner plate. 

Your children will feel so loved to fnd each special mini-letter! Piggyback on their enthusiasm by encouraging them to write little notes of their own and hide them for others to find. They’ll love it!

Narrate a Wordless Picture Book

Using a wordless picture book, your child can make up a story either orally or in writing to accompany the illustrations. If she can’t write well, let her tell her story as you write it down for her. Try some of these to get her started:

• Good Night, Gorilla 
• Noah’s Ark (Picture Yearling Book) 
• Pancakes for Breakfast 
• Frog on His Own (Boy, Dog, Frog) 

Use Story Starters

Not all children enjoy making up stories, but if they have the basic story elements in place—such as character, setting, and some sort of storyline or plot—they’ll often take right off. World of Animals and World of People StoryBuilders are perfect for this! The printable cards make great writing prompts and set kids off on a story-writing adventure with humorous or inspiring ideas like these:

• A disobedient dinosaur finds a secret tunnel under the bed
• A spunky spider plans a surprise in the grandfather clock
• Disaster strikes while a clever inventor is at the library

Again, make a point of letting pre-writers or children with limited patience or vocabulary dictate to you while you write their words. You’ll get so much more from them if they don’t have to labor over the paper. Older or more skilled writers can tackle the writing on their own. You can even share the pencil and take turns writing parts of the story in round-robin fashion.

Above all, this early elementary age is the time to keep writing fun for your child—and these three simple suggestions will help you do just that.

Last year at this time, I showed you how to create a Thanksgiving acrostic poem. Here’s a variation that helps your kids focus on reasons to be thankful.

When you’re scrambling around the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day and the children are underfoot, set them down at the kitchen table with this activity.

Directions

Write the words I AM THANKFUL vertically on a sheet of lined paper. Using each of the letters, make an acrostic

1. Each line can be one word, a phrase, or a sentence. There’s no right or wrong, as you can see from the examples below.
2. If children are having trouble thinking of words, use tools like magazines, catalogs, a thesaurus, or word lists to prompt ideas.
3. Poems can be left-aligned or centered.
4. Afterwards, illustrate your acrostics or decorate the page with photos cut from a magazine.

Gratitude

I want to thank God for

A ll His wonderful blessings, like His
M ercy and grace and compassion. For simple things like

T ea with toast. For big things like
H ope in a dark world. For
A warm, cozy home filled with love. For
N ine fun cousins! For
K eeping me safe. For
F riends that are closer than brothers. I want to always lift
U p praise to You with a thankful heart, knowing how much You
L ove me.

A Thankful Heart

I am thankful for . . .

A ll my clothes and toys . . .
M y mom, dad, and brothers . . .

T rue friends . . .
H ome and health . . .
A back yard to run and play . . .
N ana and Papa . . .
K nowing God loves me . . .
F ood on our table . . .
U ncles, aunts, and cousins . . .
L iving in a free country.

I Am Thankful

I am thankful for

A pples and pears
M y red hair

T oys
H ot dogs
A irplanes and cars
N ew crayons
K ittens and puppies
F lowers and stars
U nited States of America
L egos

Photo of praying girl courtesy of StockXchng.com