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Archive for July 13th, 2005

A Timely Notion

July 13, 2005 @ 11:53 am | Filed under: ,

A suggestion passed along by my friend Sarah B., quoted here with her permission:

“Anthony at teacher’s edition had a great idea for our timeline. We bought strips of brightly coloured paper which allowed us to make a comparative time line of ancient history for the different continents – yellow was Asia, Blue was Europe, Red was Africa etc which allowed us to see really clearly what was going on in the other continents when the pyramids were being build in Egypt, for example. It really helped clarify things for me because obviously we tend to learn in a linear way – Sumer then Egypt then Greece etc etc, but this really allowed us to see the way the whole world was developing at any given time.

“And it’s a lovely bright addition to our wall.”

Here’s a site that sells printable timeline figures—my kids love exploring the CD-rom, hunting for their heroes.

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More Sneaky Spelling

July 13, 2005 @ 8:59 am | Filed under: ,

A while back I wrote about how Jane was unwittingly honing her spelling skills while crushing me at iSketch. This time it’s Rose, who will be seven in August. She wanted her own email account and has been gleefully firing off five or six notes a day to me, Scott, and Jane.

Dear Mommy I am more afraid of flies than lions.

She wants to do it all on her own: I mustn’t look over her shoulder. After a day or two, she disclosed to me her method for figuring out how to spell words she doesn’t know: she looks through books until she finds the word she wants.

“When I find it, I copy it down,” she explained.

I asked how long it takes her to find the words she wants. She isn’t using a dictionary for this; she is turning to her favorite novels and picture books.

She shrugged as if the question was hardly worth considering. “I just think of a story with the word in it and I find that page.”

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