Looking at Simon’s writing these days it is apparent he could use a little more help in phonemics and vowel sound variability.  I set up a little relay for him and we found a way to incorporate Owen.  There are no pictures of the activity itself as Simon was in his usual school “uniform” of underwear!

I wrote down vowel combinations on cards and then wrote down a list of words on cards that used those combinations.  I set the vowel sounds on one shelf in the kitchen and the words on the table.  Simon started on the opposite side of the kitchen.  I told Simon the vowel sound, whispered the word to Owen, who shouted it to Simon.  Simon then went to the shelf with the vowel sound cards and had to choose the correct card, next he took it over to the table and picked out the word Owen had called out.  He brought them over to me to check.  Several times he realized he had the wrong vowel combination when he went to look for the words.

I think it was a pretty fun way to work on a concept that Simon would otherwise avoid.  Owen is happy to get involved however he can.  We tried to do a letter recognition relay with Owen afterwards but he wasn’t as excited and wanted to identify numbers instead.