First, she'll grab a bag of one of these phonograms...
Long a sounds: ai, ay, eigh, ea
Long e sounds: ee, ey, ie, ea, y
Long i sounds: igh, ie, y
Long o sounds: oa, oe, ow
Long u sounds: oo,ui,ue,ew
Short Vowels: a, e, i, o, u
Diagraphs: ch, tch, wh, ph, sh, th
R controlled sounds: ar, er, ir, or, ur
Long vowels with silent e: a_e, i_e, o_e, u_e
Soft c, Soft g, oi, oy, ou, ow, ing, ang, ong, ung, wor, ear, kn, wr, qu, dge, ck, aw, au, ea (bread), oo (foot)
Let's say she picks Short Vowel "a."
She'll first look at the bag to see how many short vowel a's she needs to write.
Then she'll grab a piece of paper and write them in red ink.
Now, she opens her bag and finds 8 photos that have the Short A sound. (The pink cards in this photo were from http://www.shop.montessoriprintshop.com/Color-Coded-Phonics_c103.htm )
She also pulls out these little wooden alphabet pieces. I got these from a craft swap years ago, but I think they are from Oriental Trading Company.
After she gets them all correctly spelled, she can put everything back into the bag for tomorrow. It is self correcting because she will run out of letters or have left-overs if she has some incorrect. It's also good for perfectionists since she's using moveable letters instead of writing them down and "getting them wrong."
She completes this project over again until Friday.
On Friday, she pulls out her paper with the 8 a's on it. She then pulls out her photos. Using the photos from the week, she WRITES the words around the letter a's on the page.
The project is complete once she gets all words correct. She then puts her paper into her new dictionary of spelling and moves onto the next spelling phonogram.
I'm still tweeking the program in that I'd like to have paper that allows for room between words and I'm also going to give the wooden letters a paint job so that they stand out better on the paper.
Blessings,
