Dictation:Charlotte Mason style

 quoted from Sheila Carroll
www.LivingBooksCurriculum.com

Are you a cracker-jack speller? Or, does the subject of spelling cause you to groan? Most people struggle with spelling.  Likely it is because they were not taught to picture the word before spelling it. 

Charlotte Mason had one of the best ideas I have come across of teaching children to spell by seeing the words before they spell them.  Miss Mason felt that the secret of spelling lay in the habit of visualizing words from memory.   She called this process the royal road to spelling.  If a child were a poor speller, she taught, it was usually a sign of too little reading of high quality literature, or skimming the text without the habit of seeing the words. 

Children can be trained to see the words they are reading. One way this is done is through dictation, usually from a work of great literature the children are reading. The method of dictating a passage to improve spelling involves seeing the word correctly spelled in the mind's eye and then ensuring that the word is written successfully the first time. The reason for the emphasis of having it correct the first time is that the opposite is also true. A misspelled word is seen incorrectly and is difficult to correct.  

Steps of a Dictation Lesson for Spelling Mastery

• The child is given a paragraph to read and study closely
• Then prepares by himself, by looking at any word he is not sure of, and then seeing it with his eyes shut. 
• Before he begins the dictation, the teaching parent asks what words he thinks will need his attention. Most students know but, if not, the teacher can point out a word or two.
• He lets you know when he is ready.
• The teaching parent asks for any words the child is not sure. She puts these a sheet of paper, having the child look until he has the picture in his mind. She then rubs out or places a piece of paper over the word or words.
• Then, the teaching parent reads the selection for dictation, phrase by phrase, repeating only once.
• If there is an incorrectly spelled word the teaching parent places a small sheet of paper over the word, so the child will not visualize an incorrect word. Then, the child goes through the process of visualizing with this one word until he can write it correctly. Most children have little difficulty spelling correctly using this method.  

Note: The preparation for the dictation should take about 10 minutes and the dictation about five.)

Spelling Fun (and some variety)

I found a very fun book at the thrift-store recently (for a quarter!).  It is called 101 Ways to Avoid Spelling Traps by Linda Aber.  After looking through the book, I felt that it would be a fun temporary change to our usual means of doing spelling each day. 
Usually the boys type their words onto a saved Word document on the computer.  I feel that this gives them computer typing skill practice and spelling and vocabulary practice all at the same time.

However, a little variety is always welcome.   We plan to do a chapter together each morning.

One of the games from the book is to do a "word-in-a-word puzzle".  The boys enjoyed this very much!

The rich man, the poor man, and the thief

Language arts story by Justin


Once upon a time there was a rich man, a poor man, and a thief. The rich man had cider, the poor man had gruel, and the thief had gravy. Well one day the thief stole the cider, and the rich man blamed the poor man!
But after the poor man went to jail, the poor man escaped and lived happily ever after.

I read this out loud and then laughed. Justin was giggling and said, "Well you know he wouldn't want to steal the gruel!".
Definition of gruel: a thin porridge. (Justin dislikes oatmeal)

Justin: Language Arts samples

For Spelling & Vocabulary, Justin gets his list of words from Noah Webster's American Spelling book. He then looks each one of them up in his dictionary (with my help) and writes the definitions. Later, he will make the words into sentences and stories. You can click the pictures to see them more clearly.
For Language, I read him a list of sentences and phrases (from A Beka Language 3). He must determine the difference between them orally. Then he copies the sentences and changes the phrases into sentences.

Spelling, Grammar, Dictation, Copywork

I think I mentioned before that I heard a great audio seminar about Language Arts from a veteran home-schooling mother. Both of her children are adults and have published writing, so I was interested in hearing what she had to say. She is a huge advocate of Note-booking for all subjects. I must say, I have to agree with her that note-booking is very beneficial! The first Note-booking project was for our bee unit study. Now that I understand more about the process, we are enjoying note-booking in the area of language arts as well. Notebooks are great ways to keep a nice record of the boys' work. (We are still using ABeka curriculum as core.)

One fun area of note-booking is in story writing. My boys love to write their own stories, so after they have written their vocabulary words with definitions (Justin has to look them up in the dictionary), they write stories about their words.

I wanted to share a couple of the stories here. I must say their stories make me chuckle!

By Justin (who likes short and sweet and to the point):

Once a man thought he was sacred! But people would warn him that he was not sacred. But he would not listen because he thought he was the best. One day he thought that he had the most glory! Then one day he drove right over a cliff! He had died.

By Jonathan

(He narrated the story to me while I wrote. Then he copied my writing - this is to keep him from seeing words misspelled even if they are his own words. Charlotte Mason recommends this):

Once upon a time, there was a dog. He liked briers and brambles. His master's name was John. John named his dog "BrierThorn."
One day BrierThorn ran away. Then BrierThorn saw a cat. He ate the cat for lunch! BrierThorn saw two dogs. He got into a fight with them. BrierThorn and the dogs had a boxing match; BrierThorn won!
Next, he went to a pizza place. He stole some pizza. "Come back here!" said the baker. BrierThorn said, "You can only have the crust."
Then BrierThorn went home.

September Update

I know it is about time for an update! I don't have a lot of time, but there are a few things I want to mention. Hopefully I will find time to update with some pictures soon.

• We have the new & exciting privilege of meeting with Jonathan's old school friend Anna once a week! She is homeschooling as well. This is a lot of fun not only for the boys, but for me as well since I have made a new friend with her mother Stacie.
  
• We are still studying bees. Currently we are reading:

The Bee People

A very delightful classic I must say (1899)! I had downloaded it as a freebie several months ago, and when we decided to do our unit study I remembered I had downloaded it. (What a nice coincidence huh?)

Here is a little synopsis I found on another site:

An attractive introduction to the curious structure, habits, and activities of bees, in which readers learn how the bees' wondrous body parts equip them to gather nectar and pollen, construct the hive, and nurture the young, and how the different kinds of bees interact in the life of the hive. Over one hundred pen drawings [emphasis mine... these are beautiful!] by the author illustrate the features described in the text.

We are also reading another nice little book called The Brownies at Home by Palmer Cox (written in 1893). I absolutely love it! The entire book is written in poetry form, and the little "brownies" are illustrated all throughout the book. The boys enjoy looking at the pictures and choosing which ones they like the best. Evidently, as I have looked into the brownies, they were very famous in their day. Books, toys, dolls, and even a camera were named after them! The copy we have is black and white, but this picture above gives a good idea of what the brownies look like. This particular book is about the months of the year. Justin & Jonathan are working on their very own Spelling & Vocabulary notebooks based on the Noah Webster's American Spelling book (The Original Blue Backed speller). These are not only a great way to keep up with their education, but they are also very fun and entertaining! I give them a new list of words, they are to look each of the words up in their dictionary, write the definitions,write a story about the words, and possibly draw pictures for chosen words. Their stories are very entertaining! Ryan is learning to read! I know I mentioned we checked out Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons from the library. I had to take the book back, so there was a break of time where we didn't get to go over the lessons. Thankfully, I was able to order it from Amazon and we have our very own copy now. - I am also reading story books to him from the library. - Along with these lessons, we are going through Disney Number & Counting & Alphabet learning workbooks.These are cute workbooks I found at the Dollar tree. He traces numbers and letters & counts. He enjoys working through these with me as we snuggle on my big bed. -On his own he does a LOT of drawing and cutting out with his scissors.

The American Spelling Book

I have been waiting all week for my printer ink to arrive. It came today! (I only paid $11 per cartridge for my ink, and it is great quality!)
I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to use McGuffey Eclectic Spelling book, but after review I prefer Noah Webster's Speller.

Pictures below of our very own The American Spelling Book (better known as Blue Backed Speller) by Noah Webster. I found it on Google books, magnified it to 16o percent, and printed it (168 pgs) on my printer. I put it in a nice three ring binder that I had lying around, and it is ready to go!

Click the pictures for a close-up picture.

I know our American language has changed over the years, but I think this will be a great foundation for my boys.

Dictation

Dictation is a great way to improve attentiveness, spelling, penmanship, and grammar. We are using Benjamin Franklin's quotes.

Today we used:

• "A penny saved is a penny earned."
• "A good conscience is a continual Christmas."

Computer practice

Here are the boys practicing their spelling words on the computer. I really appreciate Mom giving them her old computer. It has been great typing practice for them. Ryan loves to play with the paint program. Here he is creating little men. I had to save his creation.

Aren't they cute with their little faces, arms, and legs?