WORDWORKS: Exploring Language Play, by Bonnie von Hoff Johnson.
This book contains knowledge as well as thinking challenges, and I guarantee it will make you and your kids laugh. When it first arrived here I meant to browse through it quickly and take a serious look at it later, but I couldn’t put it down. I chuckled and read until Gus insisted on being fed — and he had to growl at me twice before I paid attention (Don’t know who Gus is? Read how Homeschooling Goes to the Dogs in The Lifetime Learning Companion). The book is divided into ten chapters. Here are some brief descriptions: Chapter 1, Names: People — eponyms (was there really a Mr. Silhouette?), first and last names, plant names, and pseudonyms. Places — do you know or can you guess what a toponym is? Where is Easy Street? Things — unusual names for familiar things, word play in business names. Chapter 2, Hink Pinks: what they are and why they are more important than you ever dreamed they should be. Chapter 3, Idioms: getting down to brass tacks — a definition of “idiom.” Nothing to sneeze at — writers who introduced common idioms. Not from this neck of the woods — idioms from other cultures. Chapter 4, Established Slang (nothing offensive): Not for Goof-offs — the study of slang. Oldies but Goodies: repeating slang and rhyming slang. Chapter 5, Multiple-Meaning Words: ambiguous headlines. Chapter 6, Proverbs: They never looked like this before! Chapter 7, Alike and Different: synonyms and antonyms at play. Chapter 8, Word Formation: affixes, abbreviations, and acronyms — to name just a few discussed. Chapter 9, Etymology: word origins and borrowings from ampersand to zany. Chapter 10, A Potpourri of Language Play: euphemisms, anagrams, slogans, and more. You’ll have fun reading and learning, and you’ll double your fun when you share it with your kids. Each chapter contains numerous activities and ends with listings of references and children’s books for further investigation. Recommended for grades 4 to 8, but you can stretch it either way; I think this material is good for kids up to 15 or 16. If you’re not familiar or comfortable with wordplay, I suggest you read it just for fun. You could also use the activities in a group setting. $17.95
DRAW WRITE NOW, by Marie Hablitzel and Kim Stitzer. Rejoice! Finally, books for beginning readers, writers, and budding artists. Children love to draw, and beginning readers need encouragement and practice. Handwriting may require a bit of extra encouragement because there is a “right” way to do it, and writing neatly can seem more like work than play. Hablitzel and Stitzer have put together a series of books encouraging children to combine their writing and drawing skills.
The topic for each book is carefully chosen, and the drawing techniques are ones this age group will easily master and use. These are colorful books, with easy-to-follow instructions. There is an amazing amount of good information about the core subject of each book that your child will absorb with no apparent effort. Your children will return to these books again and again to use the drawing tips, which are based on common shapes. I do wish we had had these when our children were learning to draw and write. There aren’t many books or series I would call “must-haves,” but this group of books belongs in that category. These books do not teach “handwriting” per se, but will encourage neat penmanship and creativity. These books are incremental and the depth of information and scope of the drawing techniques become more complex as the series progresses. A section at the end of each book provides more information about the subject matter, lists vocabulary, and includes teaching tips. Book One: On the Farm, Kids and Critters, and Storybook Characters; Book Two: Christopher Columbus, Autumn Harvest, and the Weather; Book Three: North America, Native Americans, and the Pilgrims; Book Four: The Polar Regions, the Arctic, and the Antarctic; Book Five: The United States, from Sea to Sea, Moving Forward; Book 6: Animal Habitats, On Land, Pond, and Rivers, Oceans; Book Seven: Animals of the World, Forest Animals; Book Eight: Animals of the World, Dry Land Animals. Each book is $14.99.
If your kids enjoy the Draw Write Now books they will also enjoy MY DRAWING AND
HANDWRITING BOOK! by the same authors. This book includes more than 20 two-page spreads for drawing and story-writing, all neatly bound. Writing pages are lined. From Amazon.
LINCOLN WRITING DICTIONARY. After the early childhood picture dictionaries, most kids’ dictionaries aren’t worth buying. Too many words are missing, too many definitions are incomplete, and the rules of grammar are ambiguous, confusing, or nonexistent. This is one of the very few good kids’ dictionaries, and is a useful bridge from early picture books to adult dictionaries. Besides being a clear and concise dictionary with more than 35,000 entries, the Lincoln Writing Dictionary really does have many features that will help any user — child or adult — become a better writer. There are 4,000 usage examples taken from more than 500 authors, and there are 600 short essays explaining writing techniques more fully. The 700 color illustrations include drawings and photographs. This book is out of print, but you can still get a reconditioned hardcover at Amazon.com for varying prices but I think your best buy will be from: www.fes.follett.com.
365 NEW WORDS A YEAR. This page-a-day calendar is a painless way to increase vocabulary (and improve spelling). Each page has a word and its definition, origin, and pronunciation, and sample sentence. Painless learning this way. Ages 14 to adult. $12.99.
FOCUSING ON WORDS. If you’re interested in expanding your knowledge of English and its Greek and Latin roots, you can do it easily and painlessly by visiting John Robertson’s Focusing on Words website (www.wordexplorations.com) or subscribing to his online newsletter. This site is just right for curious high school students and adults.
MISS MANNERS’ BASIC TRAINING: COMMUNICATION, by Judith Martin. It may seem stuffy to some — and unnecessary or just not important to others — to learn the proper forms of communication, but there is merit to hand-writing a personal note on some occasions rather than sending an e-mail or fax. This book explains the proper technology to use for private, professional, and public messages, and tells you when to phone, when to fax, and when a handwritten note is obligatory, a form letter forbidden, and a chain letter out of the question. There are examples of how to write a thank-you note and a letter of condolence, how to reply to various types of invitations and announcements, and a lot more. Believe it or not, this book is fun to read, and you’ll notice a very subtle humor hiding in the examples. From Amazon.
THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. This thin book, about 90 pages (including the index), is a complete guide to rules of grammar, spelling, usage, and concise but expressive writing. Probably best for high school age and older, but you can boil down its contents for your younger students. Whether you (or they) are writing articles, stories, essays, novels, or just letters to friends, you’ll be glad to have this guide to the essentials of clear, sensible writing. I’ve found it essential. From Amazon or Barnes & Noble online and your best buy is probably www.fes.follett.com.
MERLYN’S PEN FOUNDATION is a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging young writers in grades 6 through 12 find their own voices. The organization offers a wealth of resources, including a writing course with professional one-on-one guidance (for a fee), many excellent essays searchable by topic (most with lesson plans), and ESL and EFL resources. The magazine Merlyn’s Pen is now out of print, but past issues can be downloaded online at www.merlynspen.org. Merlyn’s Pen is recommended by Imagine, the magazine of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth, and by the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University.
CAUGHT’YA! Grammar With a Giggle, by Jane Bell Kiester. Probably lots of giggles, which may be one of the reasons this method of teaching grammar, spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary is so effective. The basic idea, put very simply, is that the teacher makes the mistakes (on purpose), and the students correct him. Add to that a few minutes each day of a humorous soap opera with Hairy Beast, Wilfred Warthog, Bertha Boa, and other residents at General Animal Hospital, and you certainly have grammar with a giggle. Don’t like the plot? Make up your own! There are lots of ideas for developing your own creative approach. This book came too late for us to try it on our kids, but the general approach is similar to the approach we often used ourselves. Easily adapted by you for different grade levels, from grade 6 through high school. $17.95 The second book in the series is CAUGHT’YA AGAIN: More Grammar With a Giggle, with more stories and lots more giggles. $17.95.
New: The success of the books above prompted the authors to create a series for the younger grades and these are as good as or even better than for the upper grades. Each book $17.95. Eggbert, the Ball, Bounces by Himself: Caught’ya! Grammar with a Giggle for First Grade; Putrescent Petra Finds Friends: Caught’ya! Grammar with a Giggle for Second Grade; Juan and Marie Join the Class: Caught’ya! Grammar with a Giggle for Third Grade.
►Best Buy: Elementary, My Dear!: Caught’ya!, Grammar With a Giggle for Grades One, Two, and Three 24.98. For the middle grades: Giggles in the Middle: Caught’ya! Grammar with a Giggle for Middle School. $24.94. Especially for high school: The Chortling Bard: Caught’ya! Grammar with a Giggle for High School. $21.95
OK, That’s All of the Really Serious Stuff!
MAD LIBS is the funniest grammar game around. It doesn’t really look like a game, just a pad of paper with stories written out and some blank spaces. The fun comes when you fill in the blanks. Under each blank space is written a part of speech: noun, verb, adverb, etc. Only one person sees the written story. That person calls out the part of speech written under the first blank space. Everyone else thinks of a word that matches that part of speech. When words have been given for all the blanks, the person with the story reads it out loud using the provided words. Stories don’t come much sillier than these, and by the time you’ve done a couple of them, everyone remembers the parts of speech without working at it at all. Sometimes we laughed until we cried. When the stories had been used so many times that everyone remembered them, they were still fun because the kids worked to make them as silly as possible, and then sometimes they’d make up their own stories. Fun for all ages. MAD LIBS, CHRISTMAS MAD LIBS, and OFF-THE-WALL MAD LIBS,OFF-THE-WALL MAD LIBS, SLEEPOVER PARTY MAD LIBS, SUMMER FUN MAD LIBS JUNIOR, ONCE UPON A MAD LIBS JUMIOR, MAD MAD MAD MAD MAD LIBS, STAR WARS MAD LIBS. $3.99 each.
PUN AND GAMES, by Richard Lederer, illustrated by Dave Morice. Hours of pun for kids and adults. Sharpen your wits and prepare to giggle. A colossal collection of puns, jokes, riddles, daffynitions, tairy fales, and homographs at play. You’ll find it’s a “punderful life” as you read about “puns that Babylon.” First you read about the multiple ways to play with words and then you are challenged to do the same. Ages 9-12. $9.95
New
A to Z, by Kay Martin and Tina Willoughby has pages of fun, imaginative, and useful ways to use alphabet to create themes that will encourage kids to use their reading and writing to create their own work answers. There are a few themes that may be hard to use but the remaining ideas are well worth using in this book. Kids will also learn and use a variety of skills such as how to use footnotes and alliteration. $16.95.
Commas: Teaching Students to Use Commas Correctly, Without Boring Them to Tears, by Randy Larson. Commas don’t excite most people, but they do help to keep readers from getting confused. This book explains comma usage with examples that invite humorous misinterpretation. Examples are clear, for the most part, and written with a kid’s sense of fun in mind.
There are a couple of points where you could take exception. For example, consider this item from the book: How do you punctuate the following: “Calvin liked sausage cereal and prune tarts for breakfast.”
The books says it is correct this way: Calvin liked sausage, cereal and prune tarts for breakfast. And it’s true that in much published writing today only one comma is used in this situation. But because I was taught that the element before the and in a series requires a comma, my preference is this: Calvin liked sausage, cereal, and prune tarts for breakfast. I have checked with the experts and both are “acceptable” — it’s technically a matter of choice, as long as the writer remains consistent within the same work. $14.95.
There are a couple of other instances in which writing styles have changed over the years. You might want to have a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style on hand if you are not sure if something is a matter of preference. Elements of Style is written for high school students and adults.
Pocket Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus. This won’t fit in your regular pockets. It’s packed with more than 150,000 entries, synonyms (listed very conveniently under the main entry), and hundreds of new words and meanings. It’s not as thorough as Roget’s Thesaurus, but I think it’s perfect for high school and college students. Handy to have the dictionary and thesaurus together. 928 pages. Cover price $13.95. $12.50 from Brook Farm Books.