Pedigreed Housewife World

As the kids get into harder readers, they have encountered a something new – punctuation marks beyond the period. Briana understands how to sound out the word, ouch, for example, but seems perplexed by all of the “swiggles in the air” and the “line with the dot underneath” after it. (“Ouch!”) She’s also encountered commas, question marks, and apostrophes a lot lately and is endlessly intrigued by them. The final push to focus on punctuation this week came from a letter Bree wrote. She didn’t know how to make a comma between the city and state. Most times there is a more fun way to teach than lecture style, but sometimes lectures are just the best thing. I go over to the chalkboard with the kiddies. I make lines and put a dot in the center. I ask the kids, “If this dot was at the end of the sentence, what is it called?” “A period!” Both girls know. “What does a period mean?” I ask. “It’s the end of the sentence,” they respond. Here it is almost all done. I