A SPELLING Epiphany!!

I had a spelling epiphany today!! I've been fussing over what to do next year, and how am I ever going to keep up with the public schools when they seem so advanced??? And I started thinking - OK, forget public schools. What are MY educational goals for my children? I can tell you one thing that is the most important thing to me right now. I want my children to read, read, read, and read some more. I want them to love reading. I want them to say - "not now, Mom, I'm reading this book about planets!" -or- "can I do workbook pages later, I want to find out what happens in this book". I feel that until reading is automatic to DD5, progress in any study will be slow. By automatic, I mean she sees a sign that says "Do Not Enter" and she can't help but read the sign, because her brain just automatically saw the words and processed it. I want reading to be easy for her. I'll get to my spelling epiphany in a minute...

When I started teaching DD5 to read at the age of 4 1/2, I wanted to test my own knowledge and just see how I read words. How does my brain break apart sounds and interpret the sounds as letters? Does my brain do it in chunks, or one letter at a time? How do I know that a word is spelled with a K & not a hard C? I had my husband read 3 words from the dictionary - 3 words I have never heard before. I don't even remember the words, now. I wrote them down and came pretty close to the accurate spelling. I took the words in chunks, and pulled from my knowledge of word roots. Anything I had read in novels or non-fiction books came in handy.

The other day, my husband had me write down a list of tools he needed. One of the words was "pneumatic". How did I know how to spell it? I have read the word "pneumonia" before, and during Bible study, have read that "pneuma" in Greek can mean breath, wind, or spirit. I took that word chunk & stuck it with the end word chunk & viola! pneumatic.

Was it week after week of spelling word lists that gave me this knowledge? I aced my spelling tests by just taking a quick glance at the words before each test. I remember a few times ignoring the teacher completely. One day I was introduced to the word "machine" and had to write a sentence for it. I saw the word in print but hadn't listened to the teacher say it. I flubbed my sentence. My sentence was "I have many machines at home", I figured it was generic enough that the teacher would never know I didn't know what machine was. I got an A. I'm not sure when I learned that machine sounded like "mu-sheen".

All this to say...I learned spelling from reading good literature. I learned spelling from reading interesting books about history and science. I listen to a story and I am able to process the sounds and translate them into words and thoughts. I'll never forget learning odd words like "steatopygia" through my own study of Ancient Egypt in 8th grade. I made a point to use the word in sentences for English;) My English teacher wasn't pleased.

So will we fall "behind" the school system if we don't do spelling next year? I'm really thinking about focusing on our reading skills - getting those up to a 4th grade level, and then adding in spelling. My spelling epiphany is that I can probably give my DD5 more spelling skills through helping her to read well and easily, and through reading a lot of great literature. I think that is my answer for next year...