Now that Little Mr. was confident in writing words, I wanted Little Mr. to start working on sentences. I also wanted to teach him how to spell commonly used words that don't follow the usual spelling rules to increase the types of sentences he could write himself, and I preferred to teach him these exceptions by having him write them out himself in his sentences.
Activity 1: Writing - Sentences start with a capital letter and end with a full stop.
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE REACHED: Knows letter sounds, can respond with a letter name rather than the letter sound when you ask them to spell a word, can easily spell 4-6 letter words, can write legible letters without needing to trace dotted lines, can spell words using sounds from Spelling (and writing) Part 2
ACTIVITY RANGES FROM: 5-10 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Pencil and paper (or whiteboard and whiteboard marker)
The first letter of a sentence is an upper case letter, and the rest are lower case letters.
First explain that the first letter in a sentence is a "big" letter, while the rest are "small" letters (avoid sentences with names / proper nouns in the sentences for now).
New common word: "the".
The first commonly used word I taught was "the", so I explained to him that the word "the" is spelled "t", "h", "e". Because it is such a common word, he picked it up very quickly.
Give them a sentence to write.
Choose a simple sentence for him to write using words he already knows how to spell. These are sentences I chose that use words he already knew how to spell from Spelling (and writing) Part 2:
The dog is big.
The cat is long.
The duck is small.
Put a full stop at the end of the sentence.
After he wrote his first sentence, I told him about the period or full stop: it's a "dot" that means it's end of the sentence, and it needs to go near the bottom of the last word (otherwise he'd put a dot floating around in the middle somewhere after the sentence!).
Tips for working on proper spacing between letters and between words:
From his writing of words during the Spelling and Writing Parts 1 and 2 activities, I noticed he would write his letters either too squished together or with too much space between them. So I wanted to work on writing sentences with proper spaces between the words, as well as between the letters within each word, so that the individual words could be distinguished.
At first, the Little Mr. had trouble with what was an appropriate amount of space between words, so I did two things:
When the spacing was so variable it was difficult to determine what the words were in the sentence, I would ask him to read it. He would have difficulty reading what he read because the letters weren't grouped in words, so he was motivated the next time to keep the letters of each word close to each other while keeping the words separate from each other.
After he finished writing a word, I told him to put his finger down after the word and start writing the next word after his finger to create an appropriate amount of space between words.
REPETITIONS: Because writing takes time, I would just have him write 1 sentence for the 5 minute activity. So the three sentences of this activity were done over three 5-minute activity sessions in three days.
Activity 2: Spelling - Words with a silent "e"
New common word: "so"
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE REACHED: Knows letter sounds, can respond with a letter name rather than the letter sound when you ask them to spell a word, can easily spell 4-6 letter words, knows that sentences start with a capital letter and end with a full stop, can write legible letters without needing to trace dotted lines, can spell words using sounds from Spelling (and writing) Part 2
ACTIVITY RANGES FROM: 5-10 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Pencil and paper (or whiteboard and whiteboard marker) if you want your child to write the words they spell
When there's a silent "e" in the word, the vowel says it's name instead of it's usual sound.
The Little Mr. already knew this from Jim's reading program, so I reminded him of that rule. To adapt this from reading the silent "e" to spelling words with a silent "e", I told him that if he hears the "ay", "ee", "eye", "oh", or "you" sound in a word, there could be a silent "e" in that word, and that we'd be practicing spelling words with a silent "e".
Words to spell and sentences to write:
If introduced in this order, later sentences will use words learned previously.
New common word: "so".
First have your child verbally spell the 3 silent "e" words. Then have them write one sentence by spelling each word out themselves. Little Mr. was relatively fast at spelling so we were able to do all of this for our 5-minute activity, but feel free to do more or less depending on how fast your child can spell.
"a_e":
"ate", "vase", "shade": The plane is so fast.
"name", "shake", "scrape": The cake is so big.
New common word: "I".
Explain that when the "I" is by itself, it's always "big", or a capital letter.
"i_e":
"pipe", "bite", prize": So I went inside.
"ride", "five", slide": The sun shines and I smile.
New common words: "he" and "she".
"o_e":
"bone", "nose", "hole": I hope she wins.
"note", "code", "home": He likes the globe.
"u_e":
"cute", "tube", "mule": He made a cube.
"fume", "flute", "glue": She likes blue the best.
"e_e":
"eve", "meme", "delete": He uses these things.
"theme", "athlete", "complete": Even she can ride her bike.
Activity 3: Soft "c" words - "ce", "ci", and "cy"
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE REACHED: Knows letter sounds, can respond with a letter name rather than the letter sound when you ask them to spell a word, can easily spell 4-6 letter words, knows that sentences start with a capital letter and end with a full stop, can write legible letters without needing to trace dotted lines, can spell words using sounds from Spelling (and writing) Part 2 and the silent "e".
ACTIVITY RANGES FROM: 5-10 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Pencil and paper (or whiteboard and whiteboard marker) if you want your child to write the words they spell
If there is an "i" or an "e" after a "c", it makes the "sss" sound.
Little Mr. already knew this when reading, so it was just a matter of applying this concept to spelling, and getting him familiar with some "ce" and "ci" words:
New common word: "what". Introduce the question mark "?" for questions.
"ce":
"rice", "dance", "prince": So what if I lost the race?
"fence", "space", "twice": What cake slice is best?
"ci":
"city", "acid", "civil": What pencil did she use?
"cy":
"fancy", "cyclone", "cyclops": Did he bang the cymbals?
Because there are other spellings of the sounds "ay", "ee", "eye", "oh", and "you" that don't have a silent "e" spelling, that's the focus of the next Spelling activities.
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