Nalin's class is using the concept of "word chunks" this year. Its pretty simple really. A chunk might be "en", "an", "un", etc. Each week they have to identify at least forty words with a specific word chunk as part of their homework. They are free to use sources like family members, books, the internet, etc. I think the only two restrictions are they must spell the word correctly and know what it means.
Last week Nalin had about forty-five words. The classmate with the most did just under sixty. This week, Nalin decided that she wanted to "win" by getting the most words. The word chunk was "en". We had a lot of fun working on it. At times I would say something like "are you evEN thinking of a word?" "Are you going to eat the ENtire piece." At first she quickly and eagerly wrote the word down from my hint. Then later, she would kind of look at me and sigh with that "daddy!" look. Of course, then she got the notebook out and jotted down the word. It was as if she was thinking "I don't want to write it down, but now that you said it I want to."
She was going to stop at one hundred, but I egged her on. "What if Dirk does one hundred and one. All the work and you'd still be in second." She ended up getting one hundred and fifty-seven words. The next highest was one hundred.
The best part wasn't that she had the most, its that we both had a lot of fund doing it. She put in a lot of effort and deserved to be proud of her ENdeavors.
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