Story and Spelling

The cat fell off the roof of the house today. (You'd have to know our cat - this is par for the course with him.) This prompted a big fight at supper over who was going to get to tell Daddy. Without really thinking about it, I said, “Why don’t you each take turns telling different parts of the story?”

We then divided the story equally between the four kids. After that, we discussed who would go first, middle and last, depending on which part they each wanted to tell. Then I coached the four-year-old on what parts his story would have. We came up with three sentences – a beginning, middle and end.

There we go. A study in basic story structure.

After supper, the kids made a phone call to their homeschooling friends-at-a-distance, which somehow turned into an impromptu spelling bee. Banana Brain’s little friend Blondie came up with all kinds of odd quizzes.

Spazzerific jumped in on it too, looking up esoteric dinosaur names to give Banana Brain some ammunition for Blondie, and referencing Blondie’s convoluted bird-name questions in his Field Guide to the Birds. This activity got louder and louder, until the mothers on both ends of the line were telling the children to tone it down. Oh, the giggling. Oh, the inadvertent learning. ;~)