Spelling & Grammar Week Two

Continuing the The Story of Written Language from Week One...

We traveled through history up to modern times. Next week we will explore connections between the past and our present-day Spelling & Grammar.

Monday, October 8

• review Script lesson from Friday; look at Queen Elizabeth I's signature
• look at Demi's book of Buddha Stories, illustrated with gold ink on indigo paper as a tribute to the world's first printed book

  Author's Note - The Art

  The world's first printed book was a Buddhist sutra, or teaching, made with woodblocks in 600 A.D. It contains one picture and text in gold on deep indigo rice paper, in scroll form.

• read Johann Gutenberg and the Amazing Printing Press by Bruce Koscielniak
• look at alphabet rubber stamp set and vintage printer's case; explain and demonstrate the origin of the printing terms lower case and upper case, as opposed to the architectural term capital
• offer follow up activities: rubber stamping and/or potato carving letters and stamping them

Tuesday, October 9

• demonstrate how to use the Buddha Board
• discuss how not all countries and languages use our alphabet; show examples of Chinese and Japanese characters
• read Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad by James Rumford and look at examples of Arabic writing
• discuss the beauty of calligraphy and how all around the world it is a source of admiration when penmanship becomes an art form
• allow students time to explore the Buddha Board or continue the printing press follow up activities; draft and add Printing Press to MLB

Thursday, October 11

• demonstrate how to use a slate board and a slate pencil (I got my set at the Colonial Williamsburg gift shop); show McGuffey's Readers; answer questions about the field trip to the one-room schoolhouse
• read The Handmade Alphabet by Laura Rankin
• read Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille by Jen Bryant
• offer Braille books to explore for follow-up
• draft and add Other Languages and/or Other Alphabets to MLB

Friday, October 12 - Field Trip

• visit the one-room schoolhouse, Purdy School; take a trip back in time to a day in the life of a student in the 1860s (including writing on a slate and writing with a quill pen)
• tour the other buildings in the Harrison-Bruce Historical Village

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