I love words, they enable us to express ourselves in so many different ways and being able to think of different words that are connected but which share our thought or feeling in a slightly different way is a great skill to have. I was first introduced to Mrs Wordsmith at one of the Christmas in July shows I visited last month. I was intrigued by the notion of teaching our children to be more expressive and I was impressed with the variations that they displayed at the event.
Mrs Wordsmith is created for two different age brackets. The Social Journey for children aged 2 to 4 and the Narrative journey for those aged 6 to 13. As my girls are older we have been sent the Mrs Wordsmith Narrative Journey.
The Mrs Wordsmith Narrative Journey can be sent as a monthly subscription or you can get the full set box which is what we were sent. You end up with pretty much the same contents whether you purchase monthly or all at once with the differences being you get a hilariously illustrated dictionary in your 6th monthly box which you don’t get in the full set box and in the full set box you get a binder that you don’t get in the monthly boxes.
So what exactly do you get in the Mrs Wordsmith Narrative journey full set?
6 daily workbooks. Each focusing on a different topic.
6 packs of word pair cards to correspond with the daily workbook
Word of the day stand
Binder to keep all of your word sheets safe
The purpose of the Mrs Wordsmith Narrative Journey is to introduce a new word each day in a fun way that will enable the children to keep hold of the knowledge. Each month/workbook has a different theme but if you have the full set you can mix and match to keep the childrens attention. You receive a pack of word pair cards for each of the word themes in the box. These include Emotions, Actions, Characters, Settings and more. All of these types of words are really important when making stories and creative writing at school.
The binder that we received in the full set also shows more words that are related so it actually extends the 1500 word journey to a 10,000-word journey so even when you have finished there are so many more words that you can look at. This binder will help to keep everything together and allow you to look back on them becoming a resource material when the kids are doing their homework and looking for better words to use.
The daily workbook looks quite big and can be off-putting so I recommend tearing out the page each day so the kids only ever see the one page. Take time to look at the image and then the word with its description. I think Sluggish is definitely one for our house and apparently, the image depicts me quite well! The back of the worksheet is easy to use with the children having to mark word pairs (words that go together) and synonyms (a word that means exactly the same)
So why does the Mrs Wordsmith method work? Well, the humourous colourful images are designed to appeal to kids and using the little and often method means that kids don’t switch off and forget everything they have learned.
This set is brilliant and something that has actually been appealing to my girls over the summer holiday. I know that they will be going back to school without the brain fog that normally descends during these six weeks and that their vocabulary has greatly increased.