On Day 6 of IEW’s Twelve Days of Christmas Giving, we offer several gifts to help with your youngest learners. Be sure you are registered for the event to receive the email with links to the gifts and the free shipping code.
In the eyes of little children, Christmas is the most magical time of the year. From the lights on the neighbor’s house and the yearly Christmas pageants to surprises under the tree and the carols sung in church, the sights and sounds of the season bring wonder and excitement.
Learning to read and write can also seem a bit mysterious and magical to children. How do those marks on the page translate to sounds and sounds to words and words to stories? One of my favorite moments as a homeschool mom was watching each of my five children as they grasped the wonder of reading. IEW’s Primary Arts of Language program provides all you need to teach your child to read and write, using poetry, letter stories, and games to make the process fun and engaging.
The first gift, Andrew Pudewa’s talk From Copywork to Composition: Teaching Writing through Imitation, provides simple guidelines for teaching young children about the arts of language. Fix your favorite holiday hot tea or cocoa and listen to consider the underestimated value of simple copywork, discover the power of text reconstruction, experience the delight of author imitation, and learn the surprising relationship between text analysis and creativity.
Next, we are happy to give you the Printing with Letter Stories PDF which provides an entire handwriting program to teach your students how to correctly form the letters—they will learn their letter sounds as they learn to write them. Each letter has an engaging story that helps your students remember how to form the letter.
If you have a slightly older student, we are also offering a sample of Cursive Knowledge. Studies show that cursive is an important tool for cognitive development. This course provides clear instruction in upper and lowercase letter formation, reproducible practice sheets, and material for meaningful copywork.
Finally, we encourage you to listen to the recent podcast episode “Cultivating Language Arts in Preschool” (Episode 449). Homeschooling preschool does not have to be complicated! In this podcast episode, Andrew Pudewa and Julie Walker discuss simple ways to incorporate the listening and speaking skills that will best prepare younger students for reading and writing. Keep it simple when they are young—read aloud often, memorize poems, and provide meaningful copywork.
P.S. Don’t forget to use the code for free standard domestic shipping on any online order from December 26–January 6.
