Welcome to November!
**Wee Friends will be closed Thursday, November 28th and Friday, November 29th for Thanksgiving.
I shared this article a few years back and wanted to share it again.
We have many friends who are in the stage of kid-spelling, or invented spelling. Invented spelling is where children write what they hear. For example, ‘friend’’ may be written ‘frend’’ or ‘breakfast’’ may be written ‘brkfst’. In kid spelling, children are NEVER wrong. They hear what they hear and over time, children start to hear more consonants and especially more vowels which are often challenging to detect and identify.
During our journal time (and for any child who is developmentally ready), kid spelling is encouraged. When we give children the letters to spell a word, they’re not getting the opportunity to connect a letter with its sound.
“Published in the January 2017 issue of the journal Developmental Psychology, the study concludes that the most valuable early literacy skill to encourage in kindergarten is neither alphabetic knowledge nor memorization of key sight words. In fact, it’s not a reading skill at all.
The best indicator of future success as a reader is actually a child’s ability to use invented spelling as he writes.”
We don’t push reading here (..again unless a child is developmentally ready) because if a child is pressured into reading before they’re ready, they often get the feeling that they’re ‘wrong’, which often makes reading ‘not fun’ in a child’s eyes. Reading should be an enjoyable activity but there are so many ‘pieces of the puzzle’ that have to come together before a child reads.
“To encourage development and progression of invented spelling, children should simply be encouraged to write. While writing has previously been thought of as a skill separate from reading, and one that can only be applied once a child has a basic grasp on reading, the new study suggests that writing and reading skills emerge concurrently, and that reading may actually rely more heavily on writing, rather than vice versa.”
Writing should be a free activity that simply includes a pencil/marker/crayon and a piece of paper. While letter formation is important in the later ages, activities such as work books tell children that there’s only one way to write an A. When they’re unable to write the A exactly like the book, they become frustrated and view this writing process as being wrong.
Learning to write is a process. Majority of the time, children don’t show interest in letters or sounds until 4 at the earliest. Obviously, there are a few exceptions to this but this is what we see for the most part.
Kid spelling on the journals below:
‘Three ghosts golden ninja’
‘A lava eagle with a lava man’
‘Dad mom me hearts windows door’
https://www.mother.ly/parenting/sight-words-are-so-2016-new-study-finds-the-real-key-to-early-literacy
Enjoy a few pictures from the rest of our Friday!
Breakfast– Brown rice cakes with peanut butter and fresh pears.
Lunch– Ham/turkey and shredded cheese on whole wheat tortilla/bread, fresh banana/apples, and fresh carrots/cucumber.
PM snack– String cheese and pretzels.
Wee Sprout– Fresh carrots/cucumber.
Have a fantastic weekend!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 11/1
We LOVE when our little ones happily share! 
