How do you spell that?

 Some times I really envy Ms. Wendy.  I don't know if you have ever noticed that she has the loveliest voice and particularly her tone.  It is soft and it commands without much effort on her part.  I watched in awe today as she worked with a group of children and the large moveable alphabet. The following are her thoughts on that working morning.

Some of the second year students at Maple Tree are excited about beginning to work with the moveable alphabet.  The moveable alphabet is cut out wooden letters housed in two special flat wooden boxes with a compartment for each letter.  The wooden letters are the same shape and color as the sandpaper letters. 

There are five of each of the consonants in pink and ten of each vowel in blue.  The children began with familiarizing themselves with where the letters live in the box.  As the teacher asked a child to pick out “a” or name the sound of “t’ the young lady remarked, “I’m learning so many new sounds.”  To begin with the children spelled out simple three letter phonetic objects.  They were very pleased when the could not only identify the first sound of “dog but also the vowel and last consonant and then easily find the letters in the box.  They also chose their won words to spell with great confidence.  Bumblebee was a favorite and also pencil and sea.  With the less phonetic words of their own choosing the correct spelling comes with time.  One first year young man who stopped by to see what we were up to remarked that the “l” looked like a 1.   The moveable alphabet helps the children with the exploration and analysis of their known language.  They can reproduce words with graphic symbols and express their thoughts.

It is amazing to me just how far the children have come already with their reading this year.  Some are deep into the sandpaper letters and some are already past that and working with the alphabet and objects.  I was told that the children were invited to take it out and make their own words at first and then they were given objects that were three letter phonetics and encouraged to spell them.  I love it when we get into this kind of work.  Exciting times!