Ship Full o' Pirates

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed

Congratulations! You have been to to Ship Full O' Pirates over 100 times! Just thought you'd like to know.

The older Pirates and I have spent many an unhappy Friday (in the days of yore) bemoaning a sad spelling test score. Yes, once upon a time, I did feel the need to put grades on papers (in red ink, to my everlasting shame). Then life got in the way of school. One Pirate was diagnosed (this was long ago and he’s fine now) with leukemia, 2 months later The Squid was born, we were just way too busy to dig out that red pen. Things like that will change your life. We really had to scale down for the first year of treatment.

Thankfully, I had read (somewhere reliable, never can remember just where) that if you have a lifestyle of learning, and your home is set up for learning, then even large amounts of time off from academics due to family emergency will NOT adversely effect your children’s educational progress.

You know, paper and pencils and art tools and dictionaries and encyclopedias and great books all over the place (in logical, orderly fashion), and it helps if your children see you reading (for yourself and to them) more than gazing into the idiot box watching television. Seems like musical instruments were mentioned, don’t worry, most of us were born with a voice and hands to clap.

Also, having read alot of what Charlotte Mason had to say about how the Language Arts are learned by children, I decided our time was better spent reading good books.

I reorganized our day to include at least an hour of independent reading, even the beginners. We have done this for years now.

About a year after dropping Spelling, as an “Official Subject”, I decided it would be fun to have a very informal spelling bee. Just my Pirates around the lunch table and this book in my hands.

I just put a sticky tab marking each grade level and had them compete against each other, but on their own level. Well, let’s say, what I thought their level would be, you know how we do. “You are 7, so you are a 2nd grader.” What a stupid sentence. What was I talking about? Ok, the Spelling Bee. Those Pirates blew me out of the water. (sometimes I hafta use sea-going phrases, it’s the Pirate way) They had not just kept pace with what we would have done in a rigid gov’t school style regiment, they had surpassed it. Spelling is a visual skill, good spellers “see” the words. To be able to see them in your minds eye, you have to see them with your literal eyes, frequently.

What I’m telling you is this, there is more educational power in a good book than most of us realize. Do I mean I will laugh, with scorn and mockery in my voice, if you choose to “teach” spelling as a separate subject? Of course not! I’m not gonna do it that way though. We use our red pens for drawing flowers and hearts, well, The Princess does. The Pirates use ‘em for drawing that body fluid I don’t wish to see.

Owed to a Spell Chequer

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Click on the pictures to learn more about these books for your crew to read.

Y’all kiss yer babies and have a great weekend.

Be sure to enter the giveaway. This month it’s the Reclaiming the Culture 7dvd set from Vision Forum.

No related posts.