Friday, September 17, 2010

Why, Oh Y?

We recently did this little “beginning sounds” activity, which should have been a piece of cake.  Put the correct “beginning sound” letter on each picture…

And it was a piece of cake.  Until we got to watermelon.

“Wuh, wuh, Y!”  Over and over.

No matter how many times I corrected or swapped letters, that’s where we ended up.  (It doesn’t help that I have a daughter who is always right.)
P1000315
Totally understandable.  How do you explain the crazies who made up the English language and developed the alphabet?

Makes one want to start over from scratch with a brand new language that MAKES SENSE.  Where Kuh-kuh-K really is for cake.

2 comments:

ShEiLa said...

You are so right... our language is seriously mixed up. Site reading... phonetics... its a toss up. I remember being really confused as a kid trying to learn to read... the school system couldn't make a solid decision on which system to use. Oh what a mess. Miss Esme is very smart and she will get it... if she chooses to. *Ü*

ToOdLeS.

Julieanne said...

I used to think that the English language was all mixed up until I discovered "Spell to Write and Read", and then it completely made sense to me! In fact, if you've ever received that email that goes around with the poem that makes fun of the spellings of English words, and you had been using "Spell to Write and Read", it would totally put that poem to rest and make complete sense. Seriously!!!

If you teach that "Y" says "yuh", short "i" sound, and long "I" sound like "Spell to Write and Read" (SWR) teaches it, she won't have so much difficulty with the letters. If your daughter learns that the letter "Y" has three sounds to it, and "W" only has one sound to it, it will be much easier to distinguish from each other.

SWR is a bit more info. to wade through for the parent than a lot of other phonics programs, but it totally works. It's recommended to start with children who are 5 or 6 years of age - not really geared for 3-year-olds like your daughter, but she could definitely learn the alphabet with all of the letter sounds all at once with SWR and probably do better than just learning one letter per sound.

I live locally, so if you'd like to take a look at it sometime, just let me know. My girls are top spellers - at 5th and 7th grade, they're now spelling and reading at the 10th and 11th grade levels - and that is at the 1940s and 1950s grade levels, not at the modern method of determining grade levels for reading and spelling.

I highly recommend SWR.

Julieanne
http://www.JoyInOurJourney.com