K2 & Spelling

Date:  Nov 6, 2012

For a 6 years old, he should be every day spending his time in the playground.  But time changes.  Now, the spelling and 听写 started as young as K2.  Kids in K2 will need to not only recognise but read and write both a set of English words and Chinese characters.

Jay Jay gave a surprising response to this home work this week.  What I did is simple, I told him to "Study on his own" while I go take a shower.  That means, look at the spelling words and learn to write it on a piece of paper.

OK.  When I come out of the shower, he cries.  I was wonder what happen.  Then, I look at the words and the Chinese words… wow, it is a bit harder this week.  It's all about mysteries and discoveries.  So, normally, we will teach him word by word, explain to him the meaning, and he learned word by word.  But since today, he has to learn on his on for the first time, I think he felt scare.  I don't know why, then, he say it is very hard, he does not know how to spell and learn to spell "discovery" … so, I calm him down and teach him… "Disco" & "Very" … or learn it with "Dis" + "Cover" + "y"… and so on.  And by then, he learned again… 

So, I think I got to do some adjustment so that he will learn how to learn on his own, instead of relying on parents or teachers to teach them.

Same for the Chinese.  There are few words he does not how to write, but the impression he gave is, he don't know all.  So, again, I ask him to write not according to the sequence… 太， 月，上，天，白，阳，学，家。。。。。 WOW.  out of 10 characters, he already knew eight of them, that is 80%, what can I asked more?  Just because he does not know how to write 回 and 亮, he felt bad?  

So, again, I need to comfort him, and tell him that how much he already knew, and just have to break it up, divide and concur to do the learning...

40 minutes later… Jay learned every characters, every English words… See … no problem...

And I can see he has huge improvement on his Chinese Word writing too.

Why?  Look carefully, even the notepad I have is using the Chinese square letter boxes.  So, that is why he tries to write it on the square… sometimes using 4 squares and sometimes using the small squares.  I am using the Penultimate with "Month Planner Paper".  cool!

This is the last week there are going to have spelling and 听写.  So far, Jay has been learning it very well.  And we also gives him lots of own time to play his toys..