Literacy Milestone: Word-A-Day Calendar

Last month I wrote about my daughter's passion for "clarifying" (looking up and creating post-it notes) vocabulary words for her school reading. In the comments on that post, Karen Yingling from Ms. Yingling Reads suggested that I get her a Word-A-Day Calendar for Christmas. I thought this was a good idea and ordered the 365 New Words-A-Year Page-A-Day Calendar 2019.

So far the calendar has been a hit. We keep it on the breakfast table and read about each new word together over breakfast. I add context and help with pronunciation where needed. Then my daughter tears the day's sheet off, punches a hole in the corner, and adds it to a string she's using to save them. I think she plans to show the string to her teacher at some point. 

It's not clear how many of the words she'll actually internalize and remember, but we are having fun with the experience. And in truth, I'm learning some new words, too. ("Adust: scorched, burned"). 

Reader's Digest used to have some sort of vocabulary quiz. I would try myself on those when I was a kid. This is what bookish people do, right? They read dictionaries and use book-a-day calendars and read and read and read, absorbing words everywhere they go. Special thanks to Karen for the excellent suggestion! 

Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms!

© 2019 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage.