An Amazing Mathematical Story!

I've done a lot of research and reading over the summer about maths as I wanted to find a definite way forwards for the girls to suit them and their strengths. Eve is dyscalculic and struggles with the rote learning and formulaic side of maths but excels at the visual-spatial side of things and Faith is a whizz at formulae and mental maths but isn't so confident applying it logically to solve problems.... I have been plucking up the courage to dive in with some problem solving and today just so happened to be the right time!

I was unpacking a package of maths cubes and the girls began playing.......Eve made a hexagon and Faith made a square and I asked them to predict how many pieces they would need to make a second layer around the first one.... Eve had used six and predicted twelve for the second round... a good guess and based on sensible reasoning! She in fact used 18, and then thought that the third round would use 24, it in fact used 30 pieces to Eve's surprise!

I introduced the idea of recording what she was investigating on paper and gave her a notebook that I'd got ready a few weeks ago for just this purpose!To my amazement, she began to write..... and wrote and wrote and wrote, not only did she write about it, she turned her information into a maths mystery story for someone else to work out! For a dyslexic and dyscalculic child to jump enthusiastically into the two things she struggles with most was just magical to watch!

Halfway through I stopped her and we chatted about the emerging pattern in her investigation, she needed a little prompting to see it as she got cross with me for asking her things that she didn't know.... this is her stock response to many new situations in maths, she panics, shuts down mentally and gets upset, refusing to allow herself to think, automatically assuming that she won't know the answer! With a little patience and coaxing she talked me through it, telling me that the gap between 6 and 18 was 'two sixes' and between 18 and 30 was also 'two sixes' and that she thought that the gap between the next two would also be 'two sixes and therefore the next layer would need 42 pieces to complete.

She had got a bit tangled up in the idea of it being linked to the six times table but it was useful to be able to link it to the number of sides that a hexagon has. Faith had found a pattern in her squares linked to the four times table and I helped them to see that there were four sides to the square and there was a link there also. I'm looking forwards to suggesting that the girls investigate a triangle in the same way, and seeing if they pick up that it has three sides and that there might be a pattern to look for linked to threes.......

Faith's First Story!

Faith made this book today and sat down and asked me "Mummy how do you spell Once upon a time?". I helped her to spell it and she sat for ages writing a wonderfully exciting story..... not a punctuation mark in sight but it doesn't matter. It's so exciting when this happens! I love it!! I especially love it as it was all her own idea! It was interesting to see her looking back for words she had already written to see how to spell them again when she wanted them, instead of asking me again. I was able to scaffold some 'spelling thinking' for her which was great and she responded to that and used knowledge from the reading reflex system that we use. The story so far goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a litul girl that went to her Grannys huos and on the way she saw a monst she scream the monst looked rouan at her
her Granny luct out the window and saw the monster chasing the litul gul a way
a wood chopper was chopping wood the monster looked round and started to chasing the wood chopper
 

I am looking forwards to the next chapter which she is going to write tomorrow apparently!

Tips for Using the Reading Reflex with Your Children

I discovered the Reading Reflex last year and I really rate is as a way of teaching children to read for the main reasons that it is simple, flexible and suits all children. To be more specific:

• it simplifies the phonemes that a child is required to learn by eliminating the need to learn 'sp' or 'fr' for example and concentrating on the vowel sounds. Their reason for this is that consonant groups can be sounded out easily (apart from things like 'kn') and do not need to be learned by rote...... so vastly reducing the number of phonemes that need to be both taught and remembered. It groups similar sounds together which helps to make sense and build understanding of which sound pictures belong to which words (for example oe/ow/oa/o/ough) This makes the whole process seem much less daunting to both teacher and student in my opinion.
• minimal resources are needed and they are cheap and fast to produce. I have looked at many 'teach your child to read' systems over the last few years and find that in general they require the printing out or purchasing of vast amounts of repetitive materials that are costly in terms of time and money. The Reading Reflex requires a sheaf of printer paper, a printer and an evening of cutting out.... a refreshing alternative to most schemes!
• perfect for teaching a dyslexic child to read as it allows the majority of their 'working brain' to be used in processing the sounds and their applications. Read 'the dyslexic advantage' by Eide and Eide if you want to understand this more, and read this list from dyslexics.org.uk for a broken down 'what not to do' in teaching reading list that shows how this program is perfect for a dyslexic child!
• the bite sized 'lessons' are interchangeable, and interactive without being overwhelming. They cover all they key skills needed for reading and spelling the phoneme groups without becoming overwhelming as there is no pressure put on. You can go at the child's own pace and recap or fly ahead according to their needs. My 'literacy lesson hating' daughter enjoys the RR at which I am amazed and grateful!

It can seem a confusing system at first which may put people off it but I jumped right in and forged ahead and found that it is actually simple and logical once you know how!!!! Here are my top tips for making the Reading Reflex as user friendly as possible:
1) Read the whole book first to understand what you are trying to achieve and how it works.

2)Write a crib sheet for yourself with the major points you want to remember without reading back through the book, such as the orders to do things in and where to start with different children etc.

3)Photocopy and cut out the pieces for the word building, the little mini books and the boxes with the sound groups in. Paper clip them to the corresponding pages in the book to make them easier to locate, use and refer to (the author recommends a system of envelopes but I like having them right there on the page. I also clip the mini book and the sound sorting exercise together with the mapping and sorting box.

4) Use a simple A4 lined book to write the exercises in and any pen or pencil that works for your child.... there are quite specific instructions about where and how to do the activities but important thing for my children is quiet and lack of distractions, which needs some creativity if you have more than one child! I have one child work from the front and one from the back so it is all together and easy to refer back to.

5) Use a record sheet to keep track of where you are. At first I jotted down the dates and used symbols for where we were and how it went but it looked like this:

It quickly became unmanageable as you can imagine, so I typed out a record sheet for the advanced code which both girls were on by then and this is what it looks like:

I want to make it available as a PDF but need to work out how to do it first so for now if you would like a copy, please e-mail me at happyhomeed@gmail.com and I will send you one!

6) Don't be afraid to move on and try the next section if you seem to be wallowing around and going nowhere - you can come back and cover a little of the 'sticking point' section each time you do it until it clicks if you want to!

7) Cross out the words in each box that don't match your dialect or accent, for example I crossed out 'coal' from the 'oe' sound box as we don't pronounce it 'coel' and it would confuse my children.

8) Keep plodding on, little and often, my children will happily do about 20 minutes, and we do it three to four times a week. I shorten or lengthen each lesson/activity to suit their receptivity at the time!

9) Don't be tempted to walk away and leave them to it whilst you do something else - you need to be there to correct as they go, and keep them on task so that the sessions remain short and to the point. You can also observe how easily they do the exercises and whether to recap another day or move on to fresh material. I also note down if my youngest child needs to work on a particular letter formation; my oldest writes using cursive as she found that easier to learn and we learned each carefully together, my youngest has learned to write in a much more organic way so forms quite a few letters incorrectly!

It was hard to get into but I found that after a week or so we were in a groove and it was easy to use and effective as the children began to use some of the strategies in their reading straight away without being prompted. Plus anything that they enjoy doing is a bonus in my eyes!! I hope this was useful for someone!

Chapter Books

I have been reading 'chapter books' to the girls for years and I love it! They each have a book on the go for bedtime that I read to them, a chapter a night (or more depending on how effective the begging is or how much I want to know what happens next!). When I first started reading them to Eve when she was four, I racked my brains trying to think of suitable books and remember what I had read as a child. If you are struggling to think of any, I suggest posting the question on any e-mail home ed lists you are on as it gets everyone talking and is such good fun to reminisce, exchange opinions and gather new titles to read to your children! Not all of the books that we read can be classed as 'quality literature' but the girls enjoy them and there is room for all sorts of reading material in encouraging your children to love books!

I have always hankered after having a house with an upstairs landing large enough to house a book case with comfy chair and lamp to curl up in with a good book! As that is seeming less and less likely with our house-moving luck, I have decided to live in the moment. I put a small bookcase that we were given in the hallway and stored all the girl's chapter books on there, right by their bedrooms for them to browse and enjoy!

I have listed the books and authors where appropriate that we have enjoyed in the past or are enjoying now:

• Eve's current reading material is the 'What Katy Did' Series which is an 1872 children's series written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey under her pen name Susan Coolidge. We are on the second book named 'What Katy Did at School' and we have three beloved copies that were my Nana's when she was a child!
• Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder - we have read the first five which cover the childhood years.
• Famous Five by Enid Blyton - Faith adores these and finds them really exciting. We have the unabridged copies complete with bookworm holes munched through them which are very charming. I tweak to suit as I read though to tone down the 'girls are weaklings' vein than pops up here and there!
• Charlotte's Web
• Books by Dick King Smith, most notable 'The Queen's nose', 'The hodgeheg' and 'The Sheep Pig'.
• The Sophie series, also by Dick King Smith, Faith really enjoyed these, I think she identified with the main character somewhat!
• Before we started What Katy Did, Eve and I read through the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis, we both thoroughly enjoyed the adventure and excitement in these books. I had started the series as a child but never finished them so it was a treat to get a second go!
• We discovered the author Noel Streatfield by chance and have read 'When the Sirens wailed' which was topical and about children and historically accurate which was great. We have a second one named 'Ballet Shoes' on the go which is just as enjoyable but we are reading it more slowly!
• We know Roald Dahl's books very well, although they can sail a bit close to the knuckle sometimes in terms of language, the girls seem to find them gloriously funny!
• I have Harper Cory, Wildlife Ways lined up to read to Faith.
• On Eve's list is Heidi, again an old family copy that I read as a child too and The Secret Garden.

I'd love to hear your recommendations in the comments!

Accordian Book Photo Albums

 We just came home from our holiday in Lyme Regis - a fabulous week playing on the beach and the girls have many happy memories. I promised them we would print out some pictures for them to have but I couldn't think of a good way for them to display them. I was browsing around the blogs I follow when I got home and came across an e-zine called Alphabet Glue and there was an idea about making travel books using this accordion technique. How perfect for little photo albums I thought - and here they are!!

 We used some pretty scrapbooking paper for the covers and the zig zag, and plain coloured card for the pages....

 Eve spent a long time concentrating at the laptop writing captions for her photographs. When she began to get frustrated I sat with her and introduced her to the idea of funny little captions instead of tedious long sentences for her to write. For example, instead of The waves were big and washed our castle away, we wrote 'Tidal Wave!'. Eve enjoyed writing the punchy captions more and I'll wait and see if the idea translates into other things she writes!

Faith made some wax rubbings of the ammonite biscuits that she found on the beach and added them to her album - we still need to write her captions but the children's Grandparents arrived before we could do it!

A Valentines Cake Shop

We whipped up a batch of pink play dough and made cakes and biscuits embellished with sequin hearts in little tiny cake cases. After that we sold them to each other in a cake shop. I put out the play panels and together we stuck up the valentine cake shop signs from Primary Treasure Chest. I have discovered this site recently and I'm really impressed! The role play resources are thoughtfully put together, with a small number of different variables that don't overwhelm the children. Some simple 'open' and 'closed' signs plump it out, and literacy and numeracy are neatly catered for with 'order book' signs, a choice of price labels and a clock with movable hands.

There was some great role-play including counting and adding real money, making up cake names, sharing, using 'shop talk' and much more. It lasted a long time all things considered, but the play panels are huge and I've packed them away again for next time!

Monster Writing!

Whilst learning about Chinese New Year the girls drew a dragon and wrote a little about what they knew of Chinese dragons. They so enjoyed doing it that I followed it up with reading 'The Gruffalo' by Julia Donaldson this week. It has some fabulous descriptions of the gruffalo! I printed out these cards from Primary Treasure Chest which use the original artwork from the Gruffalo. They served to focus the girl's attention on the descriptive words used. We made a collection of our own descriptive words and grouped them together so that the girls could use them to help them write about their monsters! I used the printable page borders from twinkl as a writing frame for the girls to draw their monster and then describe it. I can't make the picture sit up the right way for some reason!

I'm glad that Eve is getting into creative writing a bit more - she gets excited about doing it and won't let me see until she is finished! She occasionally checks a spelling with me and I am finding her spelling fascinating - she can't 'hear' contractions so well, for example she has written 'is' for 'it's'. So far I'm not jumping on all those things, just storing them up for the future and being very encouraging and excited about her writing!

Snowflake Thank You Notes



Every year I have very good intentions of having the children write to say thank you for their presents but each year it somehow doesn't quite get done as I planned, with me doing most of the writing! It must seem an awfully daunting task to small children I think so this year I am planning ahead and making it achievable from the get-go!

I found these snowflake templates and edited them to carry a thank you message. They were then printed at half size, glued to sheets of card with lined paper glued to the back, enhanced with glitter glue and then cut out ready to go straight after Christmas!

A Winter Bouquet and Wreath Making

Dewi and Eve picked this beautiful bouquet for me on a canal side walk recently. I have just this year realised that natural greenery and garden flowers are so much prettier often than shop bouquets and much cheaper and more spontaneous too!

On Friday we gathered with friends and made Christmas wreaths. Idris was a little overwhelmed with the noise and commotion of so many happy people in a small space so I wasn't able to help the girls much beyond verbal instructions after a quick demo. They did so well and made beautiful wreaths. Here they are at work:

Eve gifted hers to Granny with a little note that read "yoo haf to put it on yur frunt door". That was magic to read as there is no love lost between Eve and literacy! This was Eve's first completed and unprompted attempt at writing something and communicating and I was really delighted! My main goal of late has been to get her to enjoy writing and realise a few of the benefits of being able to communicate in written forms. We did a fair bit of letter writing this Autumn and I'm hoping that that gave her a bit more confidence in her writing!



Letter Writing

This is my latest ruse in motivating my reluctant writer to write! She has long coveted my note cards and I'm not sure why I didn't think about it before to be honest! Anyhow she thought that going to town to choose note cards and envelopes was lots of fun - writing in them? Not so fun!!!! We battled over it and I kept my patience and refused to let her give up and she wrote a letter. It was messy, begrudgingly written but it was a start and it showed her that she COULD do it!

Meanwhile on the other side of the table, her younger sister who loves to write annoyingly penned a card without one huff or puff and rather nice handwriting for a very little girl! I switch between telling correct spellings of words and saying 'yes that's it' when they spell words for themselves. If they have no idea how to start it and we work it out together then I go for the correct spelling. If they say 'how do you spell house mummy? h - a - s ?' then I smile and say 'yes, well done, go for it'. Spelling can wait, for now I am interested in them building up the confidence to write by themselves and tackle words they don't know. I think that there can be nothing so disheartening as someone constantly saying 'no - that's wrong' or 'not like that, like this'.

In the spirit of not nagging about every little detail I have let go my foible about how Eve holds her pencil. It drives me crackers but beyond the odd gentle reminder about turning her paper to make it easier to write on, I think she has to find her own way with it now. I have decided to let it go because she is so reluctant to write anything I really want to make it as positive and relaxed as possible when she is writing! I made her a prompt sheet that you can see her referring to above to remind her of a few bits of 'letter etiquette' to get her started and a visual reminder of capital letters, gaps between words and punctuation marks!

We spent the following week away in Wales at Dewi's parent's house and there we wrote postcards to family and friends instead. By midweek Eve was much more relaxed and confident about the process with not a huff or a puff in sight! She really creates beautiful expressive sentences and chooses lovely exciting words. Next steps? Continuing to build her confidence and stamina in writing before introducing some other aspects of writing such as a wider breadth of descriptive words.

Living Maths Curriculum - Symmetry

We kicked off with symmetry as a starter to our 'Living Maths' curriculum. I have chosen to follow this because it includes both of the girls at the same time and can easily be adapted to different depths of understanding. It also really suits Eve's preferred learning style and makes our days fun and interactive. The final bonus is that we can carry on easily even when Idris needs to sit down and feed or cuddle as we can do it gathered around the sofa with lap trays!!

We started with the book 'Let's Fly a Kite' by Stuart J. Murphy. I read the book to the girls and we talked about the pictures. They giggled at the story and identified with the siblings that bicker occasionally! We read the book everyday and did corresponding activities to build their understanding of symmetry. Above is one of the leaf collages that were made after a walk in the park examining which leaves were symmetrical and which weren't.

Above I had the girls group the alphabet bean bags according to whether they had a line of symmetry or not. They found this a little tricky as a fair amount of visualisation was required. After that the girls drew the lines on their own sheet of letters - I introduced the idea of multiple lines of symmetry as we did this.

Here the girls enjoyed making symmetrical designs on butterflies. I did a quick demonstration about how to make the designs symmetrical before they started. Not all of the designs were entirely successful but they provided a good starter for discussing how they were or weren't symmetrical. I think that it deepened their understanding of the concept and definitely re-enforced the vocabulary!

 This was our first activity of the week - we used the Montessori insets for design and traced then cut them out before folding them along a line of symmetry. The girls found this easy to do. An extension to this would be exploring the multiple lines of symmetry that exist in the shapes. I plan to cycle back round to symmetry when we have covered the other topics and increase the level of difficulty next time round!

I built my Living Maths book list using Mama Jenn's living math book list as a spring board. Once I started searching, Amazon threw up many more options for me to choose from and I was able to select books that are really lovely picture books in addition to being useful maths starters (Get it? In addition to? he he!!). I am choosing a mixture of outdoor or physical activities, games, mental arithmetic and worksheet or art based activities to re-enforce the concept without being samey and boring!

Sight Word Shakers

We are just getting into full swing with our literacy again after taking some time off after Idris being born. This week Eve is working on 'what, where, why, when, who' and I selected some sight words for Faith that are popping up in her reading books - 'I, the, and, he, said, my'. The girls love having them in these jars - they pick them up all the time and give them a shake. I think I'm going to change the slips of card for bottle caps with the words written on with permanent marker though. This is because the cards clump together a little as the rice is heavier than they are.

Setting Reading Targets

Eve loves books but isn't keen on reading. I'm always looking for ways to get her to read without piling pressure on as she crumbles when under pressure and then can't read as she gets so stressed she just can't even recognise letters properly. When she is relaxed and positive she reads fluently and beautifully with delightful expression, and that is how I'd always like it to be for her. I want her to love reading and get as much pleasure from it as I do! With consistent regular reading she improves vastly and then is less likely to get all twisted up over it, but here lies the catch 22, as without some pressure applied to actually read, she doesn't, and then doesn't get the benefit - you see the vicious circle?! Anyhow, I came across these target sheets and suggested to Eve that we make a target for how many books she reads every week. She loved the idea and decided she would read ten books every week - we even did some maths to work out that some days she needed to read two (or more?!) to hit her target! She chose the sharks targets for this week then jumped into her first book, once read she writes the title on the sheet and colours in a shark.

This is our book trolley. Eve's reading books are on the top shelf, Faith's are on the middle shelf and our 'cuddle up and read together's or snuggle up and look at alones' are on the bottom. Eve has a selection made up from different reading schemes that suited her progression through phonics, and some non-fiction books. I have started to include some stories from the bottom shelf too so that she branches out a little. The thing with our Eve is that she is very logical and likes life to follow suit, I think that this is why the target sheets appeal to her as they set out the stall and make her week predictable! It has removed the haggling over 'how many pages' she has to read as well! Faith has gotten in on the action too - only not for ten books a week!



A Treasure Trove of OY/OI Sounds!



This week's phonics focus is OY and OI sounds. Today eve made gold coins and cut out toy teddies and then I gave her words and she told me which spelling of OY/OI she needed and then wrote them on either a coin or toy as appropriate. After we made them into little books and fixed them to a treasure/toy chest that Eve drew. It turned out well and I was pleased with how hard she worked on them!

Home Ed on the Hop!

I have been panicking a little in recent weeks wondering how on earth I will fit in all of the things that the girls need as well as tending to our new baby boy. Then things happen to remind me that there is plenty of time to fit everything in, especially if I jump at chances that present themselves. Above is Faith this afternoon. She asked Dewi to make her a rainbow book with lots of coloured paper, then asked me to write her a story about a pig. So I wrote it a sentence at a time and she read them then drew a picture to illustrate. She has just begun to read but read some CCVC and CVCC words easily, and with help worked out some CCVCC ones and some digraph sounds like 'cake' as well. I made it a very silly story so she was keen to read each installment! Two hours and sixteen pages later she declared it was 'the end'!!!! 

There is a lot of word play in our house at the moment and I used Eve's experimentation with long and short vowel sounds to do a quick spelling lesson on an envelope bound for the recycling box! The 'pressure off' approach suits Eve anyway so this was pretty effective!

Letter Formation and Early Reading for Faith

Faith is working her way through set one of the Dandelion Readers and is flying along. She loves to read and whilst she doesn't remember all of the letters yet she just looks up at me for a prompt! She blends like a pro and it's lovely to see!

We are also working on letter recognition and formation still. Faith enjoys little booklets and we have moved on to these books from Sparklebox (you can download the whole set from the link at the top of the list of booklets) and these letter formation sheets. I thought the sheets looked rather boring but Faith insisted on doing every dotted 'b' before doing them herself and I was amazed at her steady pencil control and beautifully formed letters!

We Have Discovered Katie Morag!!!!

My Mum and Dad recently went on holiday to the Outer Hebrides in the North of Scotland, and they brought back two of these books for the girls. I can't even describe how wonderful they are. They have the most beautiful illustrations (see below) and use wonderful descriptive language with a few Scottish expressions thrown in also. The stories are based on a real life Island but the name is fictional and describe aspects of Island life. The stories are funny and engaging...... and my girls have fallen in love! I have since bought some more from Amazon and they are the mainstay of bedtime stories at the moment!

My Mum did a lovely activity with Eve, getting her to look at the map in the book and another map that Mum had brought back. Eve then drew her own map of a fictional Island and made a key on the back. She loved this activity and it was a great introduction to mapping. They also made 'porridgies' from the recipe in the book.... delicious..... even though nearly burned due to our crazy cooker super heating as it does randomly sometimes!

Pipe Cleaner Sight Words!

These are pictures of this week's multi-sensory way to learn sight words. The new words introduced this week have been 'how' and 'can' as we are following the order in '100 sight word mini books'. Eve really enjoyed choosing pipe cleaners and it made her really think about the letter shapes as she now had to make them out of bendy wire instead of writing them. The idea came from 'Success with Sight Words' From top to bottom we have 'how', 'you', 'with' and two thirds of 'can'! We played with them for a while and played around with mnemonic ways to help Eve remember 'how'. She had chosen tiger striped pipe cleaners to make it from so I asked her what she'd say if a tiger bit her..... "ow" she said straight away and then when I asked what it began with she said 'h' 'ow'..... 'how'. It was much more fun to remember them this way and she had a big smile all the way through!

We fetched them out the next day to play with and Eve very easily remembered the words, including 'how' after a small prompt about tiger bites! It was fascinating to watch her arrange the letters into the correct order.... spelling them as well as recognising them! Such a result compared to six weeks ago!

I am linking this to 'word play', visit 1+1+1=1 to see more word play ideas!

Writing in Riddles!

This week's creative writing project came up after Eve read a non-fiction book entitled 'What am I?'...... it gave descriptive clues and then you saw that it was a black cat. Building on another of the ideas that my mum had given me, I planned out this activity. I was more careful this time not to pile too much pressure on as I had with the pumpkin writing two weeks ago.

I made four simple strip books by cutting an A4 piece of paper into six strips and stapling one end, then writing the riddle a page at a time. I made two examples that followed the same format and that used some of the sight words we have been focusing on! They went like this:

What am I? How can you tell?
I am....... as tall as the trees!
I have...... a very long neck!
I can....... see a very long way!
I like to eat...... leaves.
I am a......... (Giraffe)

What am I? How can you tell?
I am...... pink and elegant.
I have........ wings with black tips!
I can...... snooze on 1 leg!
I like to eat....... yummy shrimps!
I am a ........... (Flamingo)

Eve read one and I read the other and she loved them, guessing straight away of course. I deliberately included words that she can't yet decode, such as 'like' and 'snooze' and 'eat' as preparation for next week's planned assault on vowel digraphs!!!

I had prepped two strip books for Eve, by writing out the format and the dots then adding lines for her to add her descriptions. She jumped straight in, these are her riddles:

What am I? How can you tell?
I am....... black.
I have........ wings.
I can..... sleep upside down!
I like to eat........ bananas.
I am a....... (Bat)

What am I? How can you tell?
I am....... gray.
I have........ big ears.
I can....... stomp.
I like to eat...... nuts.
What am I?

I had decided before hand that after the pumpkin writing, I was not going to correct Eve's spelling. As it happened however, she chose some words that required support such as 'upside' and 'down' and 'bananas'. She was so much more relaxed this time though that she welcomed talking through the process of how to spell them, and quickly identified how many syllables each word had and seemed to know 'segment' them into 'spellable' components. When she made an error in which letter came next I reflected back her choice as part of the whole word and she was giggling and trying again..... such a pleasure to see her having fun doing it. She is usually sooooo hard on herself and gets really frustrated by mistakes.

I was also able to prompt her regularly to use a tripod grip and I was thrilled with how beautifully formed some of her words were. I had not even considered that Eve would have leaped forwards so much without having been asked to do any creative writing since our first attempt. It is really exciting and has motivated me to plan more fun ways to get Eve writing!

Montessori in Action!

This is Faith sitting on my Mum's knee demonstrating the Movable Alphabet to her. The card is one from the CVC set from Sparklebox that I posted about in May. When Mum asked Faith what the ant was, Faith replied "A tarantula" - what an answer, which she then proceeded quite calmly to spell out with the wooden letters as if she was really writing 'ant' after all. I just loved it.... and I think that Maria Montessori would have done too!! I should also point out that Faith only became interested in knowing letter sounds and using the alphabet about ten days before this picture was taken!!