Let's talk about this subject we are calling Poetry: it is reading, writing, and for us eye work in disguise.It is on the schedule for Mondays following Science. Boo likes Poetry as opposed to Language Arts or Reading because she views poetry as free, fun, & short, verses complex and daunting, thank you boring workbooks for that perception of Language Arts :/ We will stick with Mad Libs and Poetry from here on out.
The other advantage of Poetry is when you are dealing with a reluctant reader poetry tends to have an instant payoff. They can read a whole poem (or several poems) and feel accomplished. The same amount of time in a novel they might feel like they aren't getting anywhere.
Today we pulled out the poetry word grab basket: write a short shorty or poem using 10 randomly drawn words. I think what makes this game reading and writing is obvious. What makes this eye work is the use of the various fonts. Boo struggles reading letters written in any other way than how she expects them to look. I often get little questions from her like "What is that strange R?" Well, it is a "K". "What is that squiggle?" a "G". So it is very good for her to see letters in strange fonts not to mention different font sizes!
The prep time is the killer on this game. I spent about an hour combing through magazines, cutting and gluing words yesterday. When it is time to refill the basket I am going make Boo help :)
(You might notice in the first pic Boo is not wearing her glasses. When she began reading she realized she needed them. We spent 20 minutes hunting them down. I thought we had really lost them this time!)
And of course, Boo always goes her own way. You might be able to see the word was BOOKS which she turned into Bookstore :) I think public school teachers everywhere should thank me for homeschooling this nonconformist. I can only imagine the hours of debate I am saving them.
And that is Poetry, wink, wink.
