English Vocabulary

Last week, being the first week of school, was a rather hectic week for us ; new routines, new schedules and even some new approaches. Lots of re-evaluation and re-adjustments and re- scheduling at the end of each day.

My reason for doing this is that I have learned not to over-plan (still not very good at that!) and not to plan too far ahead.

My aim last week was to concentrate on the core subjects; English, Chinese and Mathematics. Get these going, then start adding other subjects into our day gradually.

The new element we added into our English is a vocabulary component.

There are times when we read a book and some words just baffle us. It would be just such a waste if we pass them by and never really learn what they mean. Of course there are times when we could guess the meanings of words from contextual clues but it is always nice to know exactly what those words mean and how they else they can be used.

As such, I have decided to include a vocabulary section to our English "curriculum". If you have been reading my blog, you would have noticed I have already done that previously. Just that I wasn't very organized about it :-b

Last week, one of our read aloud chapters was a chapter on Hermes from D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. After an oral narration, a paragraph from page 54 was selected for copywork and dictation.

I selected this list for our Vocabulary List 1 :
wit
loft
lofty
precocious
toddle
grove
herald
glib
cairn
fond
(The following words were added into the list from our holiday readings!)
snug
schooner
scuttle
bunk
galley

I plan to continue to pick words from our read aloud chapters. 10 to 15 per week is nice to start with. I let my boys copy and paste from an online dictionary to a word document. I then print this sheet out for them to study from. I use the online matching game maker that I have found to create a matching game to test my boys after they have studied their words.

Here is our Vocabulary 1 Matching Game. This is a matching game for my boys' review. This is really easy to make since I just copy and paste from the word document that my boys have made.

This week, one of our read aloud chapter came from Skylar by Mary Cuffe-Perz.
Here is our Vocabulary List 2. Shorter this time ;-) :
preen
rouse
baffle
bray
ravenous
intimidate
reserve
rollicking
replenish
audible

This is their review game for this list:
Vocabulary 2 Matching Game

Note that this little vocabulary exercise is done on top of our usual read aloud, narration, copywork and dictation.

I have added all the online games I created in my link section on the side panel. In future, I will just add the links to new games there. This will makes it easier for me to just tell my boys to "Go play the vocab game!"


Visit Rumphius English Webpage to find out more about how we approach English in our homeschool.