A Slice of Sky

For the past two weeks, I have been thinking about how to assess and develop my 7 year old’s reading and writing abililities in a way that wasn’t burdensome. The shelves in the education section of our local bookshops are dotted with workbooks of every shape, size and colour. That seemed like an easy alternative- for me. But I know Joy would just hate sitting through hours of workbooks. Besides, I don’t think they fit into our investigative approach toward learning.

I had heard about oral narration as a tool for learning. At the same time, I want my daughter to be able to polish her writing skills.  So I have decided to as her to do written narration of the books that she reads – history, science, fiction,art,etc.

I didn’t want to duplicate workbooks. So I decided to come up with templates. These templates are basically frameworks, that provide a structure for the narration- something that I think she needs at this point.

Here’s the History Template

If you use it, do tell me what you think!

I wanted to do something different than the usual descriptive piece of landscapes such as forests, beaches and mountains. So, I looked around the house and saw our oven, refrigerator and walla …MACHINES!

We take machines for granted since they have always been there , well at least for the past few generations! Most of us have not known life without machines. So I figured, “How different would our life be without them?”

Well, I’ve written a short creative writing activity on machines. It should set your student’s creative juices flowing as she creates and describes ‘her’ machine.

Download the new worksheet here.