Mrs Wordsmith

[ToohotforaSeptday]

Have you used it and what do you think? Am considering a subscription for Y2 DS, but wondering if the program is interesting and effective enough to warrant the cost.

Instead why not share a well chosen poem with your child at mealtimes and discuss the meaning of a word. Or a few words. You can pick up excellent children's verse collections for a couple of pounds from a second hand shop.

Read more to them at bedtime. Go to the library and borrow books for free.

Or just get your own vocabulary list off the internet and go through it. Maybe make funny faces or draw a picture to go with the word.

There's really no need to spend so much for expanding children's vocabulary.

it depends whether you are time poor really - the pictures look good on mrs wordsmith

time poor? Surely anyone who has the time to get a load of placemats and stuff out at dinner time is not time poor, they've the time to have conversations with their kids at the dinner table, and spend extra time re-arranging the placemats every few days to get new words!

Maybe I'm harsh on them, and the words are truly novel, but the examples on the site are words that my 5 year old DD knows and has used (tongue tied, elevate, succulent, clammy) so whilst I'm sure there are lots of words she doesn't know, and wouldn't at 7 or even 11, I'm equally sure the actual number of novel words would be a fraction of what you're buying.

wow your 5 year old knows those words? My 6 year old bright DD doesn't know those words. Perhaps your child is an exception sirfred?

Hi mrz I had the book you mentioned ( I ordered it online a while back, way earlier than my DS actually being ready for it ).

Can you recommend best ways to use it at home? I am hoping that DS would not object to working on English in 10-15 minutes sessions once or twice a week.

They've now produced a range of books coving different types of writing.
From the original book I would pick a category smell for example and ask the children to come up with interesting words to describe something that smells nice and something that smelly terrible or sound something loud or quite etc then to put it a sentence (spoken) in school I give points every time they use the word they chose correctly

I thought this was quite useful.

www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0001/8304/Descriptosaurus_teaching_resources_with_appendices.pdf