Moments

The weather has been nice.

Another trip to the dog park.

The girls are getting used to it. 

Nate finished this workbook this week.

We watched Zootopia on Thursday night, it was a great movie!

Another huge moment this week was not photographed, but I must tell you about it.

Our spelling curriculum is called Spelling U See.  It runs off a totally different method than the traditional spelling list and test.  Spelling lists and tests were not fun in first grade, but I have been doubting this new method too.

Each day I read Nate a little passage about an animal.  Then we read it aloud together, and he points to each word as we read.  Then we go through it, highlighting different chunks...

consonant chunks, vowel chunks, bossy R chunks, silent Es, and sometimes tricky Y guy.

We do this each day for a week on each little animal passage.  Lots of repetition.  There is also copywork each day, except Friday.  On Friday we do dictation, I read the passage and Nate writes it on his own.  

It is not a test!  He is allowed to ask for help, and we work out tricky situations together(usually c,k or ck!)  I tell him when to capitalize things, and when to put in punctuation. It is timed though, the goal is do as much as you can in ten minutes, but no pressure.  After ten minutes, it's over no matter what. 

In the beginning of the year we maybe got one or two sentences down, with maybe a dozen words right.  I was doubting that this would work.  He seemed to dislike it, but much less than spelling lists and tests.  I had discussed with Dave several times about pulling it, and ordering a regular spelling curriculum.  Slowly though,  he started getting fifteen, twenty, twenty-five words right as the weeks went on.

But today!  Today I got to see the confidence he has been building!  He got through all of the sentences this week for the first time! The timer went off and he was just writing the last word!  And he spelled all of them correctly and only had to ask on a few tricky rule breaking words!  Thirty nine correct words!  He shouted with celebration!  Seriously, I have never seen him like that!  He was so proud!  I could not have been happier for him. 

If you read this blog, you know I am not a great speller.  I am fantastic at memorizing things, but spelling has always been frustrating for me.  As we go through this curriculum I am learning that spelling rules are ALWAYS being broken and it's a real mess, so I have cut myself some slack.  I wonder though, if I had been taught like this.......