Back to school : Movable alphabet for young and old

Chers Amis,

The turkey has been carved, the pies relished by all, and suitcases unpacked, so it is back to school. It always seems to be difficult to restart the engine after a long holiday, especially when Advent and its beguiling purple promise is only a week away. But start we did and it went amazingly well- surprise! Luckily I found the time before we left to make a few new Montessori style, hands-on materials to try. New is always fun.

Speling - or is it spellng? Either way, it can be a challenge - for proof, try to do without automatic spell check for a week. Pippin is just learning to read and spell and Caddie continues to struggle with spelling. She is a very auditory and kinethetic learner whereas Scarlett is very visual and has no problem spelling. The words just look right to her once she has seen the correct spelling. For the record, spelling is not my hihg siut - I mean, high suit :-)

Caddie and I have tried many different approaches to understanding how words are put together in this crazy language of moth and mother, broth and brother. We liked the Writing Road to Readings phonograms last year, but working through the word list seemed random and ineffective. In early spring we switched to Christian Liberty Press Building Spelling Skills as it was recommended by Cathy Duffy. Yes, a workbook. No cringing CM'ers. I like how the lists are laid out and the exercises are well designed to help students understand the phonetics behind the spelling. Even mom is learning. Aha! tu, tch and ch all make the CH sound. I could read them all but I hadn't grouped them together. Still spelling was not clicking with Caddie and she has been so frustrated as Scarlett breezes through her work while too much purple ink stained her best efforts.
In the meantime I had started to implement more Montessori materials with Pippin. I had been interested in trying a movable alphabet so he could start to spell the words he was reading. (Yay!) Being my usual thrifty self, averse to spending, I found this printable movable alphabet at montessorimaterials.org and printed out several copies as well as the pink vocabulary cards. I separated the pictures from the words and put it all in a great beading container I found at the craft shop - with a 50% off coupon. Here is a picture of it all set up and ready to spell. I lay out a series of picture cards and pull aside the matching words cards. Pippin uses the alphabet tiles (yet unlaminated argh!) to spell out the word and when he has finished the tray he matches the word tiles to his work and can grade himself. I love how the compartments fit the alphabet/picture pieces perfectly and the cover holds the cards too!

Caddie loved Pippin's new toy, so I thought I would make a grown-up version for her -minus the picture cards :-) I used my word processing program to make tiles of the same size for all of the Spaulding 2 letter and greater phonograms/digraphs color coded to show how many sounds they make. I added a few more phonograms that were used by her spelling book such as tu and age. I also made tiles for the 4 silent e's (ge, ce, ve, ue) and the best known prefixes and suffixes (not shown on board yet). I attached them to a foam core board with Velcro and voila! Now Caddie can spell out her words with her own movable alphabet (and Pippins). It has REALLY made a HUGE difference. She loves to use the board and it helps her see the structure of each word. Now if I cood ownly lern too spel to.

-- Marjorie

PS - If anyone is interested in the phonogram tiles, let me know and I will send them via e-mail. I haven't figured out how to upload files to Blogger yet.