"My Word Book"

"Tommy's new words are written in his 'note-book' in print hand, so that he can take stock of his possessions in the way of words." ~ Charlotte Mason 

Mason goes on to describe that these are words the child knows and is able to "pounce upon anywhere".

That quote from Charlotte Mason, recalled to me through Laurie Bestaver's book The Living Page is what made me want to put together some sort of Word Book for the little girls this year.

It was a scene from a movie, though, that gave me the inspiration for what those books might look like.

{ photo from the movie The Book Thief }

In The Book Thief, (an excellent movie based on the book), Liesel is captivated by books but doesn't yet know how to read.  Her adoptive father immediately recognizes this and creates a word bank of sorts for Liesel in the form of a chalkboard wall that wraps around their basement.  As Liesel learns a new word, she runs downstairs and carefully writes her new word upon the wall.  It was a good visual to me of someone taking "stock of his possessions in the way of words."

Armed with my computer, a classic typeface, our printer and some scrapbook paper, I made "My Word Books" for my pre-reading girls, ages 5 and 6.  (Remembering my book-binding class from college, I also sewed the pages together and taped over the remaining thread, though it's not a necessary step.)

Ta-da!

My plan is that as they learn new words throughout the course of our school year, we'll pull out their little books and they will carefully copy down the words they now recognize.

For now, they've just copied down everyone's name in our family.  :) 

Audra's word book

Perhaps you're not of the mind to sew together pages and don't have years of scrapbook paper on supply as I do.  No problem!  You could easily make one buy buying a blank book (Moleskine, perhaps?) and a set of alphabet stickers and you're set!