While our daughter, Tif and her husband, Ed were staying in Waikiki alone for a couple of days we got to babysit our granddaughter, KC. Tif asked me to work with her on word families and brought some paint chip cards that she'd (ummmm...) collected from several hardware stores. Good thing there's a lot of hardware stores in Illinois.
The paint sample cards already have a nice little square punched out in them from which you can see the beginning consonants or consonant blends and digraphs. I dug out my 1st grade lesson plans and pulled out appropriate word families.
At first, KC enjoyed sounding out words that I created for her by sliding down the paint chip word family on each beginning sound. Then she said she wanted to do it on her own, which she did. She had the most fun creating her own nonsense words. Why stick to box, fox, pox when you could have mox, zox or gox?
We then worked on handwriting. Tiffany told me that handwriting is no longer in the public school curriculum. What? Yes... yes, I know the kids need to learn to keyboard. But are they never going to need to write properly? What the heck? So she asked me to work on handwriting also.
Let's see, I used to work on handwriting for half the year when I was teaching. Could I do it in 1 week?
Sigh... I suppose not.
Not to worry, we'll be visiting them for a month in fall.
Just kidding. Please don't worry about us pushing her. KC has a very strong personality and she comes by it naturally. If she doesn't want to do something, she won't do it. I can't even get her to taste a 1/8" slice of lychee.
KC is definitely ready for kindergarten and I'm remembering the joy of opening windows for young minds who are eager to understand their ever expanding world.
At first, KC enjoyed sounding out words that I created for her by sliding down the paint chip word family on each beginning sound. Then she said she wanted to do it on her own, which she did. She had the most fun creating her own nonsense words. Why stick to box, fox, pox when you could have mox, zox or gox?
Let's see, I used to work on handwriting for half the year when I was teaching. Could I do it in 1 week?
Sigh... I suppose not.
Not to worry, we'll be visiting them for a month in fall.
Just kidding. Please don't worry about us pushing her. KC has a very strong personality and she comes by it naturally. If she doesn't want to do something, she won't do it. I can't even get her to taste a 1/8" slice of lychee.
KC is definitely ready for kindergarten and I'm remembering the joy of opening windows for young minds who are eager to understand their ever expanding world.
What a blessing to have a teacher in the family and also a little one who wants to learn.
ReplyDeleteSuch sweet pictures here.
Not teaching handwriting is outrageous.
Hey, your new banner is really something.
You're a grandma with lots of useful skills to teach a little one. My granddaughter is in first grade and they still teach handwriting skills at her school. They also teach them Spanish. We have been playing Yahtzee with her to use her math skills.
ReplyDeleteThat's terrific. Tif tells me her friend is a first grade teacher in their area and she said the district has taken it out of the curriculum and now teachers have to just find time to create their own handwriting curriculum.
DeleteI also am amazed that handwriting will no longer be taught in school. I remember so well learning how to write cursive letters. KC is very lucky to have YOU as her grand. And I love that pretty flower in her hair... :-)
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they still teach cursive in 3rd grade in our granddaughter's district. I really don't understand how they can take out printing!
Deletehandwriting no longer in the public curriculum? wow!
ReplyDeletewonderful that you could teach KC like that!
Toward the end of my career teaching high school English, I had students who could neither write nor read cursive. They could only print. I'm glad KCIs getting good instruction from you!
ReplyDeleteAnd now they won't even know how to print properly! Arrrghhh!
DeleteI just love teachers. My mother was a teacher and my four siblings all teachers. You are a great teacher Kay and little KC is lucky to have such a clever grandmother (and Tiffany knows it by the sound of things). My sister also dispairs about the lack of hand writing going on in schools here.
ReplyDeleteWow! So the trend is also growing in Australia! It's so aggravating for me to know this. You're a teacher too, Lilly.
Deletehow fun, those teaching skills come in handy...with grandkids. I've noticed that too.
ReplyDeleteI love the paint chip idea, so clever.
ReplyDeleteHere's the deal on handwriting, my kids are in their teens and 20's.
My oldest had handwriting taught properly and by the time she got in high school
notes in class were written and all assignments generally typed. In college nothing was
accepted if not typed and all the notes she took were on her computer, she never needed to write and from lack of using it can't remember much but how to sign her name.
Now my youngest is a different story it was the second year our state took handwriting out of the curriculum. No one taught him and he had no interest in learning at home. But recently he had to sign his name (he's 16 - it was on his learner's permit) and was upset that he really couldn't do it. My concern is that how can they ever sign a document or anything legal, read cursive writing and I'm sure there are lots more . Most of his teachers use power points to teach and students follow along (don't get me started on this). So even if he does learn, when would he ever use it? At least they still teach printing.
That's the problem, isn't it? And it's really important for children to know the flow of how to write their letters to form a neater document. I suppose in 5 years they might move back toward teaching it again.
DeleteI can think of a parallel incident to the 16-tear-old drivers's license story. The son of a friend of mine, a professor at the University of Hawaii actually, was going for his first job interview. But, wait, this is Hawaii and this young guy had never worn a necktie in his whole life. So hasty lessons were in order to get him up to speed for the interview.
DeleteThey cannot read cursive writing. I would write on the board when teaching and the students would want to know what I had written. I have beautiful cursive writing-it was a test I had to pass to get my teaching credential, well one test--and it's almost textbook perfect, but my students who could not write cursive could not read it either.
DeleteShe doesn't like lychee? This is the time of year that I scour Craigslist for lychee. I normally buy over 30 pounds over the course of lychee season. And this year its been pretty good.
ReplyDeleteDo you know that lychee was $4.82 a pound at the BX? You can get lychee on Craigslist? Wow!
DeleteHandwriting is still taught in our schools, but it insn't emphasized and the teachers have to come up with their own curriculum. With the emphasis on reading and math, and as much as two hours a day on each, there isn't much time left for other things. It's all a shame, and it isn't even really working.
ReplyDeleteIf all kids came to kindergarten ready to learn, we wouldn't have this problem. But many children aren't fortunate to have families like ours.
Nevertheless, isn't it amazing to watch your granddaughter learn! Can you imagine a whole class of kids like her, stubborn and all? Sort of like my Irene.
KC is so lucky she is being taught by an experienced first grade teacher. And it also helps that she has the aptitude to learn.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed re your daughter's organizational abilities. Lists for her mother....wow!! She is definitely a chip off the old block (smile). KC will be the product of so many positive female influences, including her great grandmother.
ReplyDeleteL. from W.
SOUNDING OUT WORDS is the key. I was brought up as a friend of the Rudolf Flesch family in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He wrote the once-famous book, "Why Johnny Can't Read," in which he vigorously argued in favor of phonics, or sounding out words. If you don't do it that way, every new word is a new puzzlement. Flesch was an interesting figure. He came from Austria and had a Ph. D. with a dissertation on Jane Austen. He was asked to tutor a neighbor's child who was falling behind in reading and that is how he got his insight. He then became a one-man industry on reading and writing. Nice family that my parents liked!
ReplyDeleteI've written before about my aggravation when the Whole Language method was pushed and phonics was shoved to a back seat. We were told that children needed to learn words through reading "authentic" literature in context. Authentic literature... meaning to get rid of basals with easier to sound out words. Many/most children couldn't read the difficult words in "authentic" literature. No kidding! WHAT a surprise! A few years later... back we went to phonics.
DeleteMy team of first grade teachers refused to toss out our primers. We used the new books which we read together as a class for comprehension. However, I used the basal readers to do actual reading. I always said these teaching methods were really a pendulum swinging back and forth, eventually returning to what works.
Unfortunately, you would be fired now if you did not use the "prescribed" methods. This is why I believe in tenure, but it too is becoming a thing of the past. Only the administrators know best for our students.
DeleteOur principal knew what we were doing but she let us go because it worked for us and it showed in our students.
DeleteHank: I know you wrote another comment, but I don't understand why it didn't post. Sheesh! Maybe it's because I was writing to you at the same time you did the second comment.
This comment from Hank and dkzody did not come up. I don't know why, but here it is.
ReplyDeleteHank: I can think of a parallel incident to the 16-tear-old drivers's license story. The son of a friend of mine, a professor at the University of Hawaii actually, was going for his first job interview. But, wait, this is Hawaii and this young guy had never worn a necktie in his whole life. So hasty lessons were in order to get him up to speed for the interview.
dkzody: They cannot read cursive writing. I would write on the board when teaching and the students would want to know what I had written. I have beautiful cursive writing-it was a test I had to pass to get my teaching credential, well one test--and it's almost textbook perfect, but my students who could not write cursive could not read it either.
what a clever girl! She will be miles ahead of her classs mates. I love the description opening the windows of young minds
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely way for KC to learn!!!
ReplyDeleteThe only problem with cursive is that doctors mangle it when they hand-write prescriptions. Of course, their signatures are worse, which leaves the poor pharmacist interpreting Egyptian characters to try to correctly fill a prescription. The computer age with computerized prescriptions being sent "through the air" directly to the pharmacy is helping both the pharmacist and the patient.
ReplyDeleteThat's sad to hear kids can't even read cursive...and if they can't write in cursive for a signature, it would be easier to forge their names when endorsing paychecks...oh yeah, those are direct deposited.
DrumMajor
she probably be great at that Scrabble.
ReplyDeleteChildren will only learn when they are ready, like KC. My older son only ever wanted to learn to read and write when he was small, and loved to play games which helped him and he was reading fluently and writing stories by the time he started school. My younger son wasn't remotely interested, yet he was still reading and writing well by the end of his first year at school. Other children come to it later, but it doesn't often matter as they nearly all get there in the end. When I was teaching my class really enjoyed handwriting classes, it was a relaxing ten minutes or so at the end of every morning session.
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful that you can use your skills with your very lucky KC! I bet she'll remember your helping her for a very, very long time.
ReplyDeleteA student who enjoys learning is a teacher's dream, I'm sure, and you've got one with KC.
ReplyDeleteI imagine the perfumey smell of lychee might not be appetizing to a youngster, but I love eating them.
K