Overdue Like Library Books/ Word Sorts

This blog is finally up but was started two weeks ago.

This blog is overdue like...

...library books.
...traffic citations/fines.
...a forgotten bill.
...student loans.
...a hug from your only child who's been in school all day.
...quality time with your spouse or loved one.
...a term paper.
...driver's license renewal.

So I was out of commission for a little while because I was waiting on an adaptor for my laptop. Yes, other computers were available to me, but my trusted macbook pro feels like home. After my adaptor arrived it just seemed like I couldn't break away from life long enough to blog about it.

I have lots to share with you. Lots of little blessings and found/ free things to use for my daughter's schooling at home. For those who may not know, my daughter schools at school and at home.

Since my last entry, I realized that I had the Words Their Way book here already. This will be my word study curriculum. I would much rather use Spell Links, or something more explicit, but I'm on spending probation. One would probably gasp at the amount of curriculum materials that I have. Meanwhile here are the first five sorts from Words Their Way. She should be further along, but I thought this was a good place to start. At some point I'll post these on my resource page. I hope that these are helpful. Simply just drag and drop each word into the appropriate column.

Short a, Long a

Short i, Long i
Short o, Long o
Short u, Long u
Short vowel, Long vowel
Short vowel+ck, Long vowel+ke

Again, you will have to access the links with a flash enabled device.

Feel free to leave your "overdue like..." comments below.

Our Foray Into The Personal Narrative

I actually began this post about 3 weeks ago, but just didn't publish it until now.

Yesterday's reading was Vera Williams' A Chair For My Mother. We used this book to further our example of a personal narrative for our writing unit. Williams does a really great job at stretching the story.

Today, just before writing our own personal narrative, we reread the excerpt where the narrator tells of the loss of her home due to a fire. We take notice of all the detail- great examples of stretching. While the point is to tell about the loss of her home, the narrator takes us through the events that lead up to her discovering the fire (the shopping, bus ride, tulips, etc.)

Personal narratives are somewhat daunting for Lyla. She feels that everything has to be a made-up story. She's extremely creative, so it was a little hard to get her just to think about what actually happened. Also she takes so long to draw. I am definitely going to require that drawing comes later from here on out.

Our preplanning really starts with the pictures. I make little booklets for her. This really helps the writing to be longer. This probably should have even more pages, but we could always add pages later. Here are the results.

		CLICK TO ENLARGE AND REDUCE!!!

On the first page, her illustration is of me walking her to the school bus. My DD thought it quite amusing to leave me headless. More importantly, she could have gone into detail about the walk down the driveway. Is it dark? Is it scary? What does it sound like? I wanted to add that, but this whole process was a little labored so we didn't. I may make it another assignment, although from what I've read, at this stage in the game I shouldn't give her topics. I may just do it anyway.