Spelling is imporant....

A lot of teachers will tell you that when a child is young it doesn't matter if his/her spelling is important. I totally disagree. Your child will try to spell phonetically and that is good but it is up to his/her teacher to gently talk about and correct the spelling errors. It is "uncool" and wrong to take a giant red marker or pen and destroy the word entirely. When a child sees the paper filled with red marks, disappointing comments, and sad faces drawn it will totally kill the desire to learn how to spell the words correctly. If your child, for example, spelled the word board wrong and used bored.. second one when pronounced using phonics is correct too. Because the English language can be down right difficult to learn you can be positive and say, "Good try on the word but in this case it is spelled....board." Then explain that our language is complicated and hard and within the context of the sentence used the word has to be spelled with an "a". Never, ever put a child down, say they are incompetent, or stupid. Help your child, with love and consistency, to get a more solid handle on spelling words correctly. The more your child sees the word spelled correctly, the more that image will burn into his/her brain until it can be spelled correctly. Spelling is important....spell check on your computer can crach so why not buy a handy little picture dictionary or even a more sophisticated one for your older kids to use. There are also online dictionaries that you can download and use when it comes to writing. Equip your kids to become champion spellers. Read on.