Channeling My Inner Mom Geek

On August 24, 2011 at 5:30 pm in Parenting

I wasn’t sure I had an inner mom geek until my daughter started first grade last week. On Monday, the first grade got the parameters for the year’s homework. Each night, the students are required to read for 10-20 minutes and practice their spelling words for the week. There is no reading list and no spelling workbook, we are simply encouraged to read and to practice the spelling of each week’s word list.

Some parents probably do just that – they make sure their kids read a bit and practice those words each day. Other parents (read: me) may take it a bit further. Surely there are resources out there to make practicing spelling more fun. A quick Google search shows I was right- there are educational websites dedicated to such things, including one called spellingcity.com. Last night, my 21st Century first grader practiced writing her words on Daddy’s iPad, and recorded herself spelling them on my iPhone. I am also plotting how to help her create her own word book, one where she enters each word alphabetically. If she gets eight words each week, and there are about 36 weeks in the school year, how cool would that book be by the end of the year? Wouldn’t that be an amazing testament to how much she’s learned and how her language skills have progressed in the course of a school year?

As far as the reading goes, the first grade is not required to keep a book log, parents just need to sign off each night that some reading was done. My question is this, “Who wouldn’t want to keep a book log?” I mean, seriously, as an adult, I keep a book log. My mother keeps a book log. Who doesn’t want to keep a list of what they’ve read?

I think I may put the book log in the front of the homemade spelling word index. Because I’m a geek like that.

Get to know [E] Sally J. Freedman

[E] Sally J. Freedman has crafted 330 article(s) for Persephone Magazine.

Tags: first grade, Mom geek, reading homework, spelling homework

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6 responses to Channeling My Inner Mom Geek

Luci Furious said on August 24, 2011 at 9:53 pm

My mom was also a geeky mom and she came up with fun ways to learn. We did word games all the time. While we were sitting in the car waiting to pick up my sister from school or something, we would do anagrams or “how many words can you make out of a larger word” games mentally – no paper. As a result I am now a-mazing at anagrams. I was also a kick-ass speller and reader.
- [E] Sally J. Freedman said on August 25, 2011 at 9:04 am
  
  See! Your mom made you think and now look at you– ALL GOOD THINGS, I SAY. ALL GOOD THINGS.
[E] Selena MacIntosh said on August 24, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Scrabble tiles and magnetic letters are awesome for practicing spelling skills, too. One activity I did with my students was to put enough tiles/letters in the middle of the table to spell all the words on the list, then they’d work in groups of two or three to find and assemble each one. We’d take it a step further when they were done and use the same tiles to create as many other words as we could.

During read aloud times, if we came across one of our spelling words, the kids did jazz hands. It’s all about making connections. And jazz hands.

Fingerspelling is another great spelling tool, and I found the more hands on stuff we did with letters and words, the more it stuck.
- [E] Sally J. Freedman said on August 24, 2011 at 8:54 pm
  
  hooray for jazz hands! All of her words are from her reading selections, so I’d love to see that move in her class :)
  
  We’ve got a magnetic version of Hangman, so we’ll be busting those out too.
[E] Michelle Miller said on August 24, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Okay, you should know that this idea is amazing, and you can tell anyone who implies that you’re making your kid work too hard to go back to their latest issue of Cosmo and shut the hell up.

Seriously. This idea is brilliant. I have jotted it down in my brain to use with my kids someday.

You know what? Screw that. I’m calling my sister RIGHT NAO to tell her she needs to do this with my chiblings.
- [E] Sally J. Freedman said on August 24, 2011 at 8:55 pm
  
  Thanks! I don’t know about brilliant, but I think it’ll add some routine and good study habits. I’m all about good study habits!

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