Bananagrams

I've seen Banangrams in stores for awhile now, and a few weeks ago I finally got a set thinking that I'd put it on the shelf until my kids could read and spell words. And then after seeing all those cute little letter tiles, I decided that they'd be just the thing for my boys to play with now!

My first thought was to put out just the letters necessary to make words within a certain word group: tan, man, van, ran, etc... with the hope that they'd come up with the words. Instead, they immediately dumped my little sorted basket out and mixed them in with all the other letters. They quickly found the tiles to spell their own names and then began setting them up in tiny domino lines. So much for spelling out the "_an" words!

Now I have all the letters dumped into a larger basket and they help themselves to it as they wish. I still find myself wanting them to work on making words, but I'm convinced it's better not to push it at all - or at least I'm willing to see what happens with no "teaching" on my part.

Here's a quote I read in How Children Fail by John Holt last night that relates to this constant struggle I have in wanting to teach:

"But it is just as true of intelligence as it has always been true of school subjects that teaching --"I know something you should know and I'm going to make you learn it" -- is above all else what prevents learning.

We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing the things that make them stupid.

Ingenious teachers, "gifted" teachers, teachers who are good at thinking up new and better ways to teach things, can do just about as much harm to their students as the teachers who are content to plug along with the standard workbooks and teachers' manuals. These gifted teachers can't stop teaching. They are like someone who tries to help a friend start a car by giving it a push. He grunts and strains, the car gets rolling, the engine catches are begins to run. The driver says, "It's going now, you can let go." But the pusher won't let go. "no, no," he says, "you can't go without me, the car won't go unless I keep pushing." So the car, now ready to run at full speed, is held back - unless the driver want to break free and leave the helper on his face in the road. And most learners, children above all, can't break free of their teachers."