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I know, I know. These are *how to's* and not *blogs* but they are interesting to me (and maybe to you as well), so I post them here until I can find some little box gadget to put them in.

Silent E Moment

What is a "Silent E Moment"?

I am a home school educator, among many other things, and have been doing this for the past 6 years since Michael was in Kindergaten. It's a challenging occupation, to say the least, especially now that I have Michael in 6th, Joshua in 4th, Samuel in 2nd and Caleb in K-5.

When Michael was about 4 or 5 we were learning about vowels and their function in the English language. The basic rule with vowels is that they say their sound when they stand alone but if there are 2 vowels together or if the word is followed by Silent E then the first vowel says its name - mat/mate, cap/cape, met/meat, red/read etc. Well, there was a point during this time when I had just about convinced myself that we were going to be doing Silent E all the way through high school because it seemed that he just wasn't getting it.

Also at this time he wanted to learn to play the piano. We don't have a piano but we do have a keyboard which he plays. I was walking past his room one afternoon when he was playing and I heard this: (Country & Western style) "Silent E....makes the vowel....before it say it's name....Silent E YEE-HAA!...Silent E." (He was also into "Gunsmoke" as well).

So now, anytime that the proverbial light goes on and things just click we call that a "Silent E Moment".

Have you had your Silent E moment lately?

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