Education Lady

Dear Education Lady,

My son has trouble spelling and is forever making errors on his papers in grammar and punctuation. How important is this for him to learn?

Dear Punctuation Parent,

It’s important to spell correctly just as it’s important to add a period at the end of a sentence. You’d be hard pressed to read my response to your question if I never used any end punctuation but instead added fragment and phrase until you ran out of mental if not physical breath and had to shift your eyes from the page just to take get an idea of what I said.

Here’s the deal. Punctuation gives our brain the pause needed to digest what we just mentally consumed. Teach your child to stop and start sentences. For instance, if your son is very physical, which I imagine he is, he probably likes to do things with his hands.

So, get his feet involved with punctuation.

Go for a walk. Have him tell you something in a complete sentence while walking. Then encourage him to stop walking the moment he feels the sentence is done.

Applaud him with a high-five or something he likes. Fist pounding…whatever the case may be.

Now your encouragement along with the physically muscle memory will come into play when he writes. Have him write grandma or his pet frog a card after dinner.  Encourage him to walk around the table or kitchen or living room and say one sentence out loud. Stop. Give your high-five encouragement and then send him running to write down that single sentence.

Do this for each sentence with a minimum of three to five.

Make it fun.

Lets face it; grammar and punctuation are boring for most kids (and adults), so spice it up a bit.

Allow him to get on this site where we have loads of articles for parents, teachers and kids. Have him search for a kid article and see if he can find any spelling errors.

Hint: We sprinkl lost of them in to our kidz posts so they can practize, email corections  to us and win prices!

Make this a weekly activity you do on Sundays together.

1.     It promotes family time.

2.     It makes learning interactive and fun.

3.     It’s reading practice along with a “game” experience to help with spelling, which believe me, many a child and parent need help with!

4.     Have him submit a Dear Education Lady quesiton if he has one...

Remember to teach your child it’s better to do than to not do because of a need to be perfect. Read our related articles on the down side of perfect to get a better understanding on this point. It's important for kids to discover early that there is no such thing as perfection...

Do share your thoughts below and let me know how this post helped you.