For my boy, spelling came so easily when he was young. You could throw any word at all at him, and he could spell it. He preferred to do spelling orally and so I would call out words from the kitchen sink as I washed dishes every afternoon, and he would respond back with the letters. And they were right every time.
Then puberty started to set in and one day my boy could no longer spell. Anything. The words he used to know were all of a sudden beyond his reach. He was frustrated and upset. We tried different spelling lessons with different approaches, but nothing helped.
And so I set it aside. I did not want him to feel defeat every day so we gave spelling a rest for a while.
A year later we picked it back up, using the original spelling book we began with and it worked again!
I do not really understand why my son would have lost the ability to spell at the start of puberty, or even if his age had anything to do with it.
What I do know is that patience and making sure he never felt a failure made a difference for him, somehow.
Have you ever had trouble teaching your children spelling? What did you do?
Interested in reading last week’s ‘Teaching the Tough Bits’? Read about helping your child to read here.
Places I linked up this post
Drop by and read the posts of some great homeschooling families at this week’s Weekly Homeschool Blog Link Up at the Homeschool Review Crew.
