Vocabulary Schmocabulary: Getting a leg up in English from the old lady

These days, I think anyone with kids would agree that schools give the kind of homework that requires parental involvement. BIG parental involvement. Like: what 2nd grader can create an entire diorama all by themselves? Hello? Glue gun in the hands of a 7 year old. No danger there.

So with all my re-living the elementary school years via my son Chase who's now in 5th grade, I thought, well, one good thing that comes from that is that he'll have a real leg up in English, writing, etc. Since that's sort of what, you know, I do. So we scrutinized papers and I was prompting him to add more adjectives and throw in funky stuff like quote marks well before the words "quote" and "marks" had been strung together in his classes. But this year, I've been encouraging Chase to have a go at his homework solo. He's preparing for middle school where they'll be really loading up the homework and the expectations are severely raised. I'd worked to lay the foundation; it was time to fly on his own.

So all last week, Chase had these vocabulary word cards to put together--a handful every night. He had to write the provided word on one side and on the flip side, a definition and then a sentence using the word. He did all of these by himself and the night before the test, I was quizzing him since there were so many. And you can imagine my sheer delight to come across the word "ashen." As in, "You could say she had a bad night from the look on her ashen face." Or, as Chase wrote: "My fireplace has a lot of ashen in it."

Yep, thank goodness I was here to give him that leg up.

My budding English major: