Hi Julie,
I enjoyed your talk on the Not Back to School program and just had to write because I came up with the funniest idea for dictation yesterday with my 10 year old.
I was reading a passage from Peter Rabbit to her, and she was trying to write it on our big wipe board. Well, I had found these Barnyard Answer Buzzers* at a teacher store while traveling, and I wanted to find fun ways to use them. So we decided to assign one animal to the following:
Cow Mooing: meant you missed a capital letter
Dog Barking: you have a punctuation mistake
Horse Neighing: you spelled a word wrong
Rooster Crowing: that word is RIGHT!
Well, it was the funniest way to do dictation EVER. I was hitting the ROOSTER on almost every word, but when she’d pass up a place for a comma, the DOG would bark and she’d start laughing and go back to figure it out. And the HORSE was hilarious because the neighing was really loud, so I’d hit it and hit it again at each attempt to change letters for spelling, until finally she’d get a ROOSTER crowing and she’d crack up.
I couldn’t think of anyone who would appreciate this home education triumph….except YOU!
Barnyard Answer Buzzers: Every Brave Writer family should have a set.
Love,
Wendy
*If you’d like to purchase you’re own set of Barnyard Answer Buzzers, they are available here. -BW Staff
