afterschooling language arts

So I'm not too fond of the academics at Sparkle's school. It's disheartening when the "corrected" paperwork that Sparkle brings home has unmarked mistakes -- handwriting reversals, misspellings, incomplete sections, etc. The work is well within Sparkle's ability but she is getting sloppy and from her point of view, there are no consequences for sloppy school work. Plus, language arts is Sparkle's strongest subject, and the public school just isn't set up to meet her at her level.

So, I've started to get creative in afterschooling language arts. I really like the Charlotte Mason ideas of copywork and dictation for teaching language arts, so I've integrated them in afterschooling.

I've started paying Sparkle for copywork. She copies lines from a beginner's bible. The sentences are just the right length for her. I only pay for perfectly copied lines, not lines with mistakes or sloppy handwriting. She usually spends the money on ice cream or Cheetos for lunch at school. I attribute her recent improvement in recognizing sentences breaks in her personal writing to this copywork.

The school gives Sparkle a list of spelling words each week. Most of the words are fairly easy for Sparkle. However, I tell her that she still needs to do "spelling" at home each day, just like all the other kids. I make sentences out of her spelling words and dictate them into a mini tape recorder. Then I give Sparkle the tape recorder and have her write the sentences. She can play the dictation over and over again as many times as she needs without my help. I've noticed that she'll naturally stop the tape player in the middle when she has a "chunk" in her head, write that bit, and then continue to the next "chunk". Some days she replays the dictation many times, other times, just a few.

The two activities above take very little time from me, so Sparkle can do them while I distract Glitter, cook supper, or do any of the various other activities that need tending to at the end of the day.

Sparkle's official homework for school is 100 minutes of reading per week. She has a reading log to write how many minutes she's read each day. However, according to the fine print, that's time spent reading *or* being read to. So a couple of days a week, for her "reading homework," we snuggle on the sofa and I read the grammar textbook to her and we discuss it. (Keep in mind this is no ordinary grammar textbook, but a book filled with fun stories.)