A Day Off.

Yup.  We actually don't take many days off because it is easier for Mark if we try to do similar things daily.  And since "school" time isn't as stressful anymore it works.  In fact when Mark thinks that he needs "school" time, he will either sit at the table or come get me.  It's cute.  But today was a day off from school stuff.  We might do a math craft later but we'll see.

One another note, I wanted to tell you about a spelling program for Android that is absolutely wonderful.  It's called Droid Spell.  And Mark actually did play this today.  And puzzles.  So maybe we weren't completely school free today.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.vg.droidspell.donate&feature=more_from_developer#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwiY29tLnZnLmRyb2lkc3BlbGwuZG9uYXRlIl0.

Wow, what a long link but it's worth it.  This one program doesn't have any of the issues I had with other programs.  To start with, it allows you to choose whether your child gets only the letters needed for the word, or those & more.  And you get to pick, in a general sense, how many more!  This is great for teaching your child to discriminate between the letters.  It also gives them a very good start for later spelling lessons.  You know, the ones that don't involve pictures and visible letters.

Even more, it allows you to set it so that your child must follow left to right progression to spell the word!  Since that is one of Mark's problem areas, I love this setting.  Mark doesn't like it so much but he's quickly figuring it out.  And to be honest, the program is great for this because it has much more patience than I do.

You can hide the target letters, or not.  In our case they are not hidden.  As Mark's skills increase they will be hidden.

You can choose whether the words are all uppercase, all lowercase, or first letter uppercase with remaining lower case (clean).  We are using the last setting for right now.

You can choose whether the movable letters will be in random order or not.  For Mark they are, but for kids that are at the very, very beginning this would be helpful.

You can choose whether there are background images or not.  This was a big issue for Mark originally because he couldn't focus past the beautiful images.  So for us, background images are off.  Later, when his skills are more solid, I'll probably turn them back on so that he can learn to focus more.

And you can choose whether there is a picture for the word during or after spelling is completed.  For us, I just leave it up.  Hopefully it will help Mark make connections between the words and the images, thereby building his vocabulary even more.

Oh, and the your child will need to get the letters into place, they do not snap into place just because they are close.  This turned out to be great because Mark would try to drag and drop letters expecting them to just fall into place.

Oh, and just in case you don't realize it, the program will speak the letters out loud when they are touched.  And then it spells and says the word when your child is done.

All in all, the program is soooo worth the $2.99 donation that they ask for.  I'm looking forward to future changes, and other programs, from this program developer.  They seem to have a good idea how to design for the child to truly learn a skill.