Working with Words

Once again, I had a brilliant idea, but it all got lost somewhere along the way.  I had a wonderful idea that would involve story telling, some new vocabulary words for my daughter, and a little bit of art time.  We would write out our story, then she'd draw all the art.  I would help my older son write out his story and he would draw all of his pictures.  Then we would bind them all together for a pretty little book.  It sounds like a wonderful idea, doesn't it?

Yesterday I was introducing the new words.  Aside from being cut in on by a million and one distractions, we were actually doing pretty well.  I'd gotten through about half the new words I had planned for the day with both of the children sitting by me.  They were both really excited.  It was like story time, learning, and fun all rolled into one, and we got to talk about one of my daughter's favorite things, holidays.

For the most part during the month we've been talking about Thanksgiving and all of that, but it really didn't seem to click.  It was like every day we were starting over new.  She really didn't care and spent most of our time together staring out the window, which quickly frustrated me, and I gave up.  I have to admit, for the early part of the month, homeschooling has been a complete failure.  I'd been about ready to give up on any talk about history and just go on to something more plainly structured to try again after the holidays.  After all, why should I bother putting all this time into researching age-appropriate ideas for Thanksgiving and colonial history if neither of the kids really had any interest?

That's when I decided we'd work on this one last ditch effort.  I was going to introduce the words and hopefully drag the two kids into working on a story, even if it killed me.  I knew they'd both love the coloring and drawing part, so if I could just hold their attention until then, I'd be okay.  I might just be able to make this work.  With a handful of hope and constant self-reminding that I can't just give up, I wrote out the cards while the kids were having breakfast.

"What are you doing, Mommy?" my daughter asked with that look she gets on her face whenever she thinks I'm doing something strange, you know the one, the child looks at you with one raised brow in a strangely adult looking expression for just being a kid.

Without looking up, I answered, "I'm writing out words on these cards that have to do with Thanksgiving."  I didn't look up, so I only caught the look out of the corner of my eye.  I knew if I looked up, I'd lose her.  As long as I seemed to think what I was doing was more interesting than she was at the moment, her curiosity would get the better of her.

I was right.  With a quizzical look on her face she walked over to the counter where I was writing away.  She picked up the card with "Thanksgiving" written across it, giving it a look like it was somehow poison.  She opened her mouth, then hesitated, like she had to think for just a moment, then asked, "What does this say?"

"Well, if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you," I told her very plainly.  "If you want to know so badly, you're just going to have to read it, now aren't you."

She shot me this glare that could have killed.  My daughter's good at that.  She then protested loudly, "I don't know how to read, Mom!"

Still having not looked away from the cards I was writing, I flatly said, "I guess that's your problem, now isn't it?"  I know it probably wasn't the nicest way to lure her in further, but I know my daughter.  If I'd told her something simple, like telling her I'd help her learn to read it, or the plain truth that I know she can read, it would have met with an argument.  Better to appear that I simply didn't care.  She would be so much more ready to work if she thought whatever this was held all my attention and was so positively the best thing in the world.  At seven, she's getting a bit old for that tactic, so I'd better take the fullest advantage of it I can before it no longer works!

Just as always she got really frustrated and whined, "Mommy!" with that death glare all kids know how to give so well.  However, it didn't last long as in dropping the card, she noticed that I had written on the lined side and the other side was blank.  Of course, I had done this for a reason.  I wanted to use the lines to mimic the lined paper she was used to working with.  When copying the words to her own paper, she would have an easier time.  That's not what she thought when she saw it, though.  "Hey!  I know why the other side is blank!  I bet we're going to draw pictures of the words on the other side!"

This did prompt a look from me, "Actually, that's a good idea, but not what I was thinking.  Maybe we'll do that, but we aren't going to do that now.  These words are all about the holiday at the end of this month.  We're going to learn these words a little at a time, along with some others to help us along, and then we're going to write a story about the holiday.  On each page we're going to draw a picture that matches, and then you can show your friends and everyone you know just how much you've learned."

Her eyes lit up in the way they always do when she's excited, complete with that goofy shocked expression.  She started to fall over backwards in her fake dead from the shock way.  Then she ran around in three little circles shouting, "Yippee!"  After all that craziness she took off up the stairs to her room to play spouting off about what she was going to do for school.

About twenty minutes later I was done with an entire package of index cards.  I only had 98 words instead of the full 100 because I got mixed up on a couple of them.  While trying to write out slow and methodically, it's easy to get confused.  I mean, I know how to spell "religion" for example, but I have no idea why the "g" came out so crazy and unreadable, nor why I kept trying to add an "e" into it.  The other was simply a copy of "turkey", and I only really need each word once.  I'd included all kinds of words, from foods like "squash" and "pie" to actions like "chop", "saw", and "build", to useful things like "tool", and "axe".  I'd included necessary things when discussing the first Thanksgiving such as the name of the holiday itself and words such as "Mayflower", "Puritan", "Pilgrim", "Indian", and "Native American".  I was pretty proud of myself, though I did add a whole bunch of words later.

With cards in hand, I marched up the stairs and sat down on the bedroom floor.  I sorted them out, laying cards all over the floor, mixing them up, and selecting the highlights for the day.  I picked a pretty good assortment of words.  I'd chosen "Thanksgiving" and "feast" to describe the holiday in a quick little way.  Then I'd chosen words to describe the people who celebrated the first Thanksgiving, who they were, how they got here, and how this first holiday came to be.

I asked my daughter if she knew what the holiday at the end of November was.  As I did this, I handed her the card with "Thanksgiving" written across the front.  When she whined that she didn't know I told her that she was holding it in her hand.  She gave me that death glare again, but I got up and left the room calling back, "Remember, 't' and 'h' together sound like 'th', so work from there."  I didn't really have a reason to walk away other than "checking on the baby" who I knew was sleeping peacefully, but I knew she would work at it with far more dedication if I wasn't sitting over her.  By the time I got back she had already figured out "thanks" and was working on the second half of the word.  It hadn't even taken her that long.  Before long she declared what it had said with confidence.

That's when I laid down the next word, asking her what we do on Thanksgiving.  She immediately tore into the word, trying to dissect it's every sound to figure it out.  It didn't take her long to spit out the word asking what a feast was, then answering herself in saying she thought it was the big dinner party everyone has for Thanksgiving each year.

I went on to ask her why we celebrate Thanksgiving, which, true to the theme of the month, she told me she had no clue, so I popped down the next card, "Pilgrims" and asked her, "Who are these people?"

That word rolled off of her tongue pretty quickly, and then she confessed that she didn't know who pilgrims were at all.  I told her the meaning of pilgrims undertaking some kind of religious journey, but she couldn't figure out why anyone would have to move as a part of a religion.  That's when I started to tell her why the Pilgrims left.  I used our own spiritual path as an example, asking how she would feel if we weren't allowed to light candles and sing our chants anymore.  She said she'd be angry and would want to go somewhere that would let her do those kinds of things, and she guessed that's why the Pilgrims left.  I told her that wasn't entirely the same thing, but they left because they wanted freedom of religion, complete with cards and everything!  She was reading through those words like they were nothing!

As we added each new word, we went back and covered how all the worlds related.  Now, I have to check my facts again on one portion of it.  I always thought the Pilgrims left England, but my research shows that they sailed from Amsterdam, so I have to wonder if that's somehow where they were from.  My daughter would tell me with great delight, "We celebrate Thanksgiving every year with a huge feast. We do this because the Pilgrims came to this country from England on the Mayflower because they wanted freedom of religion."  You get the idea.

So not only was she reading, but she was also getting into the whole idea of the history!  I can't wait to hit the cards again and start working on this some more!  Who knew all I'd need to actually capture her attention was flash cards!