Ki loves his word cards. They are index cards with words from the Dolch List and some words from his Dick and Jane books and his own wordshe has chosen to learn.  Each word is written on 2 cards- one in AL CAPS and 1 in all lower case. My kids with dyslexia had a hard time recognizing the loeer case and the capital of the the letter as being the one same letter, so this method helped. For Gavin I had to write in both those round straigt print and the 'newspaper looking' pring and script print. He got confused in school ( 1st grade) becuase hey TAUGHT kids to write D'nealian, but all the reading material was in either that  block letter print with round 'a's  or it was in a newspaper print with hooks on the a's and g's. I remember him almost in tears because the 'k' in the book didn't look like the almost cursive 'k' he was taught and refusing to belive it WAS a 'k', becuase "My teacher says a "k" looks like like  this________ draws a loopy 'k'.." It took me  whole school year to getpast that. He still had trouble with being able to name or give sounds for many letters in 3rd grade. I digress.....

Back to Ki. He just needed help with matching CAPITALS to lowecase, so he just got 2 sets of cards. I try to weed out old cards that he knows well, but it's hard. He hates parting with them. So I have to doit in secret a couple words at a time. (This is also the kid who cries when he outgrows his undewear and needs to replace them).  Ki gets to choose 2 games and I get to choose 2 games to play with the word cards  when we have word card day.

How the Word of the Week works:

Ki chooses a special word to learn onMonday. Like "archer". A word he likes that is an area of interest to him.  Here is a sample of what we might do:

Day 1: draw a picture to go with the word, use clay 'worms' to make the word. make new word cards and play word card games.

Day 2: Use toes/fingers/nose to fingerpaint the word and draw a picture. Copy the word a couple times on the White board.

Day 3: Play Hopscotch with the word. (Draw a hopscotch board on the sidewalk/driveway. Use the letters of the word instead of numbers. Have the child call out the letters as they hop). I read the story I wrote w/ thenew word.

Day 4. Ki reds the story and illustrates it. Writes the new word in a salt tray.

Day 5. Play toe-touch (post its with individual letters scatteres on the wal, he crab walks to the wall and uses his toe to spell the word. Both frontwards and  backwards) Reads his story to daddy and shares his picture.