Duncan 'helping' Sayer with her ETC homework

Tonight when we got home from dance class I put a Netflix DVD about Egyptian pyramids in for the kids while I got dinner ready. After about 15 minutes Sayer said 'I'm not learning anything.' Okay, so not every DVD can be a winner. So I turned it off. And Sayer asked if it counted as enough homework that she could play on the computer for a while. I said if she completed two more ETC pages she could turn the computer on. She'd already done her 5 page assignment earlier in the afternoon. But this book is so easy that she readily agreed and set herself up at the table to get started.

Duncan, meanwhile, had been emptying the toy box. At the bottom he found a random small can of play-doh. He asked if he could play with it. I said yes and he went and sat at the table next to Sayer. This is normally a recipe for disaster, when she's looking for a distraction (about which she can then complain when I ask about her progress). This time, though, Sayer decided to involve him in her homework and they both had fun.

The first page she worked on was one that showed three words next to a picture. There are twelve of these problems in a grid across the page. The first one was a picture of a tube of toothpaste next to the words tub, tube, and tab. Sayer read aloud to Duncan 'is it a T-U-B, a T-U-B-E, or a T-A-B? A tub, a tube, or a tab?' And Duncan would look at the picture and give the answer. I think he got 10 of them correct, to which Sayer would respond 'you are RIGHT!' and circle the answer. The other two she whispered the correct answer to him after he'd gotten them wrong :)

The next page had a grid of 8 problems with a picture with two words under it. The first picture was of a shirt with a small tear in the hem with the words 'rip' or 'ripe' under it. Sayer would ask Duncan which one was correct, and would give him the uber-gameshow-host 'you are RIGHT!' response after he answered.

After she did those two pages, she decided that they were having fun so they'd keep going. The next page had a word written out with blanks below it so the student could copy it, then three pictures next to it. She's supposed to cross out the one that matches the word. The first word was bike. As Sayer was writing down the word she was prompting Duncan to try to identify the letters in the word by making their sounds. She was trying, but Duncan wasn't quite getting it. From the other side of the kitchen, where I was up to my elbows in fresh avocados as I made guacamole, I asked him, 'what letter says 'buh?'' This is one I know he knows, and he immediately answered 'B!' Then Sayer tried to get to the next letter by naming it's short sound, which is clearly not the sound it makes in the word bike. So I asked him, 'what letter says 'eye?'' and he answered 'I!' Sayer then asked him what letter made the '/k/' sound. He didn't know, so Sayer then told him that that sound is made by a C, or a K. Then she asked him what letter made other letters say their long sounds. I put it in terms he'd recognize from Between the Lions and asked what vowel at the end of a word made other vowels say their names. He quickly responded with 'silent E!' :)

I don't think he 'helped' with any of the other problems on this page, and at the end of the page Sayer was more interested in playing with the play-doh with him than in getting a nickel (her reward for 2 extra pages), so she asked if she could stop and play with him. Since it was extra work it was of course fine for her to stop. So then they played together with the play-doh until I put dinner in front of them ... and even then they played together (sometimes still with the play-doh) while they ate. :)