stories

Our school schedule has changed again.  On the first day of the new schedule, we made the alphabet cards.  On the second day we didn't have class because kids were practicing a dance for a dinner party in honor of a leaving senior missionary couple.  I'll post on that later.
I try to play a lot of games.  All of the kids go to school early in the morning, and many go again for part-time study after I leave.  Learning English (if it is anything like teaching) can be hard.  If it is filled with drudgery, I'm afraid of loosing their attention.

Today, in group two, we continued working on our vowel sounds.  Short/long a, e, i, o, and u.  I have some phonics flash cards that help, but for some age groups that only works for about a day.  I can't pull out new or different cards every day, so I try to get good mileage out of them by coming up with random games to play with them.

We are on a stories run.  I have each kid choose 3 cards from the vowel set and they have to tell a story with them.  By 'story' I'm referring to something that goes somewhat (or exactly) like this:  "Rabbit uses the shovel to dig in the dirt so she can plant flowers."   It helps us fill in the in-between words.  I do things like this for every age group.  One card for the younger kids, more cards for the older kids.  Sometimes the stories are really funny, because we don't always end up with words that usually play together.  My favorite story like this was from Roth:  "The girl writes in her book and then a ball bounces in and breaks a vase because it falls off the chair."