Once again I am supplementing First Language Lessons to make it more kinetic learner friendly. Not every child will need stuff added to this book; it is considered a complete program by itself. But to help things "click" my hands on learner needs things he can move or see, rather than just hearing what I say and talking to me about it. I know from reading on the Well Trained Mind Forum that I'm not the only one with a kid like that trying to use this curriculum, so instead of letting them give up or have to think up stuff themselves, I posted what we added every ten lessons for FLL1, and I'm doing it again for First Language Lessons Level 2.
(Lesson 1) Lesson 1 is a basic review of nouns and common nouns and proper nouns. Builder Boy seems to have finally gotten the hang of which is which, but Early Bird needed some refreshing. So I tried something new: I used a very "proper" voice when talking about the differences, and waved my hand in a snobby way when talking about "those common nouns." [Imagine a posh Victorian era person speaking of the riff-raff.] Early Bird loved it. It's hard to say at this point if he's got the idea or not, but he certainly loves my "proper" voice. He loves it so much he has started to use his own "proper" voice. Here's the video I posted of Early Bird speaking in his Proper Voice on the Sceleratus Classical Academy facebook page.
(Lesson 2) One of the ways we make the poem memorization more fun and kinetic learner friendly is to add signs or hand gestures to go along with the words. Sometimes we use the accurate signs. Sometimes we make up our own stuff. Usually I post pictures, but Early Bird puts so much verbal expression and excitement into his recitation, I took a video of him saying it instead.
Here are the words and the actions:
The Goops by Gelett Burgess
The Goops they lick their fingers, (pretend to lick fingers)
And the Goops they lick their knives; (pretend your finger is a knife and swipe it past your mouth)
They spill their broth on the tablecloth- (make a cup with your hands then tip it over)
Oh, they lead disgusting lives! (hands on hips and look disgusted)
The Goops they talk while eating, (make a "mouth" with your hand and move it near your mouth)
And loud and fast they chew, (make the hand "mouth" move bigger and faster)
And that is why I'm glad that I (point to yourself)
Am not a Goop-are you? (lean in and ask inquiringly)
(Lesson 3) For FLL1 and pronouns we came up with a pronoun swap game that used sticky notes. This time around we just used the white board and used different colored markers.Early Bird also needed some help remembering which pronoun group went for which people. Before I used physical gestures to indicate, but this time around I drew pictures of people.
(Lesson 4) reviews the definition of a verb which we have our own motions for that can be found on this blog post.
(Lesson 5) introduces state of being verbs, and begins on memorizing the list of words. Instead of using the book's clapping technique to memorize the list, I taught the boys what I remember being taught in 7th grade. And if I still remember it.....more than 15 years later, it must be good. I made a quick video of what I do with the boys instead of typing out a few words with a ton of pictures. I also wrote it out in an old blog post here.
Lessons 7, 8 and 10 actually come with good hands on ideas for linking verbs, so there was no need to add anything else for the rest of these 10 lessons.
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The lessons and the poem we got from FLL2. The original link is to the
author's printing press website, the picture is a link to the Amazon
listing. Both are affiliate links that add no extra cost to your purchase. I came up with the extra activities on my own, except the Am.is.are Was.were story, which was made up by my 7th grade remedial English teacher, Mrs. Miller. (My private middle school had higher standards than the public schools I had gone to before that.)
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