Rebuilding the Wonderful Wall

   Have you heard the old adage  Ã¢â‚¬Å"You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?† Recently, a homeschooling mother of three had an experience that proves the wisdom in this saying. Last week I took down my word wall. It was a combination of the Phonetic Farm and a word wall. It had been three years since the wall went up, and I never finished putting up all the farm animals. We didn't use the wall, and it was only half filled in. Recently we added comfy sitting spaces and rearranged the school room. We are in our school room for all of our lessons now, and I have regretted taking it down almost every day. I [want to] refer to the wall almost every day now and keep saying we should add words to the wall—the wall that isn't there.    I have learned much since seeing the Phonetic Farm when it first came out, and I realize that the big wall of words is useful and helpful for all of us when we are writing our papers, no matter what our age. Thank you for creating the Phonetic Farm. Kristen If you haven’t seen one, the Phonetic Farm is a sturdy tri-fold folder containing five pages of colorful permanent stickers. Printed on all sides with colorful farm scenes, word lists and phonetic rules (plus a page of locations from Sound City), the Phonetic Farm engages even the youngest learners in the acquisition of good reading and spelling skills. For example, beehive stickers teach words with â€Å"ē† sounds, and a sticker with a friendly horse in a red barn teaches words containing the â€Å"or† sound. Here at IEW, we were delighted to learn that Kristen’s wonderful word wall has been restored to its rightful place. Click here to see pictures of her creative setup. To learn more about IEW’s Primary Arts of Language and the fun Phonetic Farm, click here. What is your IEW success story? We hope that you will share it with us.