No, we’ve not kidnapped any vocabulary words, but Sprite did use the stereotypical style of a ransom note to create some language arts notebooking pages.
In our spelling lessons, there were a few words that Sprite kept misspelling over and over. When that happens, I know to stop repeating the same teaching methods and instead choose something different.
We had a stack of Sunday newspaper sale flyers which had colorful letters, perfect spelling out those troublesome words. I had her spell the root words so that this could be both a spelling lesson and a vocabulary lesson.
After the cutting and taping was done, we talked about other words that these three root words form. As she added those words with suffixes and prefixes, I asked her questions about the spelling, trying to draw the spelling rules out of her (drop the -e and add -able, for example).
I also asked her to highlight the added parts, the suffixes and prefixes, so she could see the root words clearly and note their spellings.
They do make for some colorful notebooking pages. We’ll see on her next spelling quiz if this method worked.


Hi and welcome! I'm Jimmie and this is my online collage of our Charlotte Mason homeschool. Taking just a little more time to document our learning shortens the learning curve for other busy homeschool moms.
Feel free to browse around my posts and freebies. My aim is to bless each reader with something useful. 















{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Great idea! I may try this (or substitute stamping/scrapping, since that’s a craze here!) with some of my ‘spellers with problems’!
Elizabeth recently posted Its been a l-o-n-g- l-o-n-g time!.
Love this!
What a fun idea! We are just beginning a study of root words, so we’ll have to try this!
Sparklee recently posted Is This What Charlotte Had in Mind.
I love this!!! I am going to put this in my tumblr archive so I can remember it.
Giggly Girls recently posted Review- Adventures in Boogabooga Land DVD.
OOh what a nice idea. i’ll have to try that unless of course you tell us Sprite did badly on her quiz. which i doubt!

Amber Pamper recently posted About Murders.
Always such good ideas! Thank you for sharing them so freely. I will tuck this one away for a bad spelling day . . .
Looks like fun…for me too! Thanks for sharing.
Cheryl recently posted HOW I Co-op Hebrews Week 7 of 11 and Wisdom Week 1 of 4.
Loved this idea – just did it with my 8yo and linked it to your blog.
Thanks for the great ideas
ZELDA recently posted Suffix.
Jimmie,
You are amazing! I wish my son and I could tag along with you and your Sprite in your homeschool!!! Thanks for the idea…I may just have to use that one here!
Barbara recently posted Car-Schooling.