ImageFor most of Sara’s second grade experience, her teacher noted on her weekly goals to use “more interesting language.”  I’m not exactly sure what exercises she was supposed to do but I didn’t see much progress in her vocabulary during the year.  So this summer we are working on dynamic and impressive words.  Unfortunately, vocabulary is not one of my strengths.

Oh, what to do?

One night, as I read a book to the girls titled “Consider Love” by one by one of my favorite children’s authors, Sandra Boynton, I realized that she was using beautiful, interesting words to describe love.  Viola!  Here is my vocabulary list for this summer.  We have words like: frivolous, mysterious, despairing, unbounded, etc.  I love when I seek an answer and it simply appears.

So I made a list of the words that we are going to study this summer.  The trick then, was how to incorporate our vocabulary words with all of the other English lessons I want to teach.  After five failed attempts, I finally got the answer.  The exercise sheet looks something like this:

  • Write a definition of the word.  Yes, we have to pull out a paper-based dictionary and flip through pages..how retro!
  • What part of speech is it?  We are learning nouns, verbs and adjectives
  • Name four things that are {insert vocabulary word here}.  Trying to broaden our understanding of nouns
  • Name four things that {insert vocabulary word here} things do.  Trying to broaden our understanding of verbs
  • Write a sentence that uses the vocabulary word, a noun and a verb from the lists.

We are having a hard time coming up with the list of nouns and verbs but I guess that’s what exercises are all about.  My goal is that this exercise can help Sara understand how an interesting adjective and verb can really add flavor to her writing.

I’m not sure how much Sara is learning but I can tell you that I’m learning scads!

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test everything; hold fast what is good. (Thessalonians 5:22)