Children of average ability

[tamarind]

shylyn:

tamarind:

Shylyn,

Here's the box.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3363/3256121091_24351d64e8.jpg\">

I help you to look out for it when I go shopping.

Hi Taramind
Hmm..unable to view the photo leh..wonder why..btw, thks for helping me look out for it..let me know if u happened to see it somewhere..gam xia! :lol:

shylyn,
Can you view the photo now ? The cover says \"My First Scrabble\".

I saw My First Scrabble at both Kiddy Palace and NTUC Hypermart at Jurong Point. NTUC is selling $5.00 cheaper at $39.90, you can find it at Section 10 under Toys, together with other board games.

There are a total of 15 word cards ( a few words a card). But actually we can also let the kids spell any words using the colourful letter tiles. For very young children, we can start with 2 letter words like is, am, in, it, etc, then go on to all the 3 letter words.

csc,
Yes definitely can keep for grandchildren

[tamarind]

smurf:

thanks tamarind for the website. my boy knows this website, but he didn't really like it.hahha. wonder why. :?

smurf,
Also check out this thread. buds has shared very good and fun phonics materials

http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1927&start=0

[H2O]

My son came and ask me this question.


why is caterpillar with 1 t and butterfly is with double t.
Why do they start to share t? Single or double t?
any clues? :?

[smurf]

oh yah. but me too lazy.hee. :oops:

[clarabella]

H2O:

My son came and ask me this question.


why is caterpillar with 1 t and butterfly is with double t.
Why do they start to share t? Single or double t?
any clues? :?

Hi H2O

My guess is :idea: :
- the word 'butter' follows the English spelling rule of doubling a consonant after a short, stressed vowel, hence it's spelled with double 't's after the vowel 'u'.
- caterpillar... I think there is only one 't' due to the origin of the word. It appears to have come from an old French word 'catepelose' and was first recorded in English (sometime in the 15th century) as 'catyrpel'.
So from the outset there is only a single 't'.
Hope that helps!

It seems that many words which don't follow the 'rules' come from other languages, so finding the origin of the word helps me to provide an explanation to my kid who always wants to fit things neatly into categories. The inconsistencies in English words really drive him bugsh*t!

[shylyn]

tamarind:

shylyn,
Can you view the photo now ? The cover says \"My First Scrabble\".

I saw My First Scrabble at both Kiddy Palace and NTUC Hypermart at Jurong Point. NTUC is selling $5.00 cheaper at $39.90, you can find it at Section 10 under Toys, together with other board games.

There are a total of 15 word cards ( a few words a card). But actually we can also let the kids spell any words using the colourful letter tiles. For very young children, we can start with 2 letter words like is, am, in, it, etc, then go on to all the 3 letter words.

csc,
Yes definitely can keep for grandchildren

Thks taramind
Managed to view the photo..think becos of my off server cos i'm replying frm my home now..
This Scrabble set definitely looks familiar..in fact, i bought a similar version (not scrabble) but a game to encourage children to spell in a non failing mtd..(dunno how to describe..see whether i can post a photo up as well) & it goes for $9.90..bought from a shop in Taman Jurong Shopping centre. Yet to open it up to explore as intend to gift wrap as my boy's bd gift..heheh...'copying' ideas from someone we both knew (accumulating all the pressies to give to my boy on his bd)

[tamarind]

clarabella:

H2O:

My son came and ask me this question.


why is caterpillar with 1 t and butterfly is with double t.
Why do they start to share t? Single or double t?
any clues? :?

Hi H2O

My guess is :idea: :
- the word 'butter' follows the English spelling rule of doubling a consonant after a short, stressed vowel, hence it's spelled with double 't's after the vowel 'u'.
- caterpillar... I think there is only one 't' due to the origin of the word. It appears to have come from an old French word 'catepelose' and was first recorded in English (sometime in the 15th century) as 'catyrpel'.
So from the outset there is only a single 't'.
Hope that helps!

It seems that many words which don't follow the 'rules' come from other languages, so finding the origin of the word helps me to provide an explanation to my kid who always wants to fit things neatly into categories. The inconsistencies in English words really drive him bugsh*t!

My answer to my girl is simply \"English is like that one lah !\" Ooops Singlish :oops:

This article was published in the Economist :


\"Ghoti and tchoghs may not immediately strike readers as staples of the British diet; and even those most enamoured of written English’s idiosyncrasies may wince at this tendentious rendering of “fish and chips”. Yet the spelling, easily derived from other words*, highlights the shortcomings of English orthography. [*Fish: gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation (courtesy of GB Shaw). Chips: tch as in match, o as in women, gh as in hiccough.]

\"This has long bamboozled foreigners and natives alike, and may underlie the national test results released on August 12th which revealed that almost a third of English 14-year-olds cannot read properly. Due partly to its mixed Germanic and Latin origins, English spelling is strikingly inconsistent.

\"Three things have exacerbated this confusion. The Great Vowel Shift in the 15th and 16th centuries altered the pronunciation of many words but left their spelling unchanged; and as Masha Bell, an independent literacy researcher, notes, the 15th-century advent of printing presses initially staffed by non-English speakers helped to magnify the muddle. Second, misguided attempts to align English spelling with (often imagined) Latin roots (debt and debitum; island and insula) led to the introduction of superfluous “silent” letters. Third, despite interest in spelling among figures as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, Prince Philip and the Mormons, English has never, unlike Spanish, Italian and French, had a central regulatory authority capable of overseeing standardisation.

\"There are linguistic reasons why spelling reform is tricky to undertake. Written language is more than a phonetic version of its spoken cousin: it contains etymological and morphological clues to meaning too. So although spelling English more phonetically might make it easier to read, it might also make it harder to understand. Moreover, as Mari Jones of Cambridge University points out, differences in regional pronunciation mean that introducing a “phonetic” spelling of English would benefit only people from the region whose pronunciation was chosen as the accepted norm. And, she adds, it would need continual updating to accommodate any subsequent changes in pronunciation.

\"Yes despite these concerns, some changes are worth considering; it takes more than twice as long to learn to read English as it does to read most other west European languages, according to a 2003 study led by Philip Seymour of Dundee University. Standardising rules on doubled consonants—now more or less bereft of logic—would be a start. Removing erroneous silent letters would also help. And as George Bernard Shaw observed, suppressing superfluous letters will in time reduce the waste of resources and trees. In an era of global warming, that is not to be sniffed at.\"



Shylyn,
Yes I know who you are referring to

[MumandMe]

Hi Tamarind and other parents…


I read the first few pages of this thread with great interest. Reason being I can identify with vomitting blood teaching my boy, who is very different than my girl in terms of learning too. He’s 2y9m now. He knows his 26 alphabets (both upper and lower cases) and he knows their sounds (ie phonics). The difficulty I have with him is in recognising chinese characters and also in his super duper short attention span.

Whenever I try to do some learning with him, after giving me his 20% concentration power for like 20sec, he’ll tell me "enough", and he wants to go back to play.

What can I do to help him improve his attention span.

[RRMummy]

:scratchhead: who unlocked this dusty thread?

[concern2]

RRMummy:

:scratchhead: who unlocked this dusty thread?

:rotflmao: I was tempted to reply to some of the posts until I noticed they are so dated!