First spelling test

Tate had a complete meltdown last night while studying for his spelling test. I learned last year with Lake that it is best to study the words all week rather than try to learn them all on Thursday night. We reserve Thursday for a practice test.

I sat with Tate first and called out the words to him. He kept looking at me for validation as he was writing so I decided to stand out of his line of vision. When he finished I had him write the words that he misspelled two times. When he realized that he didn't spell everything correctly he completely fell apart. He was heartbroken. It took over half an hour for me to get through to him that we were practicing and when we finished he would be able to spell all of the words. We ended up in the bathroom with the door closed and we practiced until he knew the words. In case you are curious about what kind of words he's being tested on, here they are: bat, fat, pan, ant, grass, cracker, ladder, rabbit, glasses and alligator. He knew the first four words and surprisingly, he can spell alligator. It's the other five that gave him trouble. One last note about his words - he picked these words himself.

Since I was so consumed with Tate last night, Lake took it upon himself to write his words from memory. He seems to have a photographic memory and this confirmed what I'd been thinking. When I call out words to him during the week he gets a far away look in his eyes. I think he is visualizing the word on the board at school or maybe in his notebook in his own writing. His test today will be on these words (that he picked himself): ants, magic, backpack, baseball, Atlanta, Atlantic, add, Los Angeles, happy, apple and the bonus word basketball. Do you see the theme in his choosing? It's all happy things for him. Even ants is a happy word for him because they are studying ant colonies in science. I'm sure he picked Atlanta because of his favorite people that live there!

Hopefully I can post the results soon!