Thursday, September 4, 2014

Hey, Andrew




Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek, level 2, has been loads of fun. Five weeks into school and we've almost finished learning it. Not every page has been done, but most of the material has been learned. It teaches the alphabet, the sounds of the letters, and eleven basic words. All that's left to do is learn to spell those eleven words including their diacritical marks. We don't know what the marks mean yet, and there seem to be lots of them, but it is important to learn the marks along with the spelling of the words. There are accent marks above some letters and apostrophes above others, while still some have a backwards apostrophe, and yet others have a rainbow type semi-circle. I wonder how many more there may be, since these four are on the first eleven words we're learning.

My third grader came up with the idea to print out the letters of the alphabet, laminate them, and add velcro to the back so we could play a spelling game with the words. So we worked on it for a few days and came up with this.


The word spelled on the red mat is anthropos, meaning 'a man,' and has two diacritical marks over the 'a.'  We laminated the mats, so we can write the marks above the letters with dry erase markers. It only took us one day to decide that we really wasted our time with all the velcro because it is aggravating to pull back apart. We should have left the velcro off completely, or should have used magnetic squares so we could spell on a cookie sheet or on the magnetic white board. We will fix that as soon as I can get some magnetic squares to put on the back..

In the meantime, we are having fun spelling our Greek vocabulary words. We take turns calling out a vocabulary word for each other to spell on the mat. We even hint to each other where to place the marks. If you are learning another language, you might consider making a spelling game too. It certainly makes studying a bit more palatable.

Happy Schooling,
Sherry

*Please forgive my shaky pictures. Hope to soon get a phone with a stabilizer built in the camera.