Tag Archives: vocabulary

The Homonym List

Posted on September 6, 2014 by thefriendlymoth

Writing about puns got me thinking about homonyms, which made me think of The Homonym List. My little sister was a math kid. She used to put pictures of the math books she had finished in the photo cover of her school … Continue reading →

Posted in Exercises, Language | Tagged children, Education, Homeschooling, homonyms, Language, Seattle, Teaching, Teaching writing, vocabulary, wordplay | Leave a comment

Pretty Beautiful

Posted on July 25, 2014 by thefriendlymoth

“It’s so pretty! Wow, it’s so beautiful! Look at that, it’s so pretty! Isn’t it beautiful? Oh, PRETTY!!!” That was me, age ten, hiking with my family at Mt. Rainier. “It’s just so beautiful. Oh wow, it’s so pretty!” This … Continue reading →

Posted in Language, Ruminations, Uncategorized | Tagged Education, hiking, Homeschooling, Language, Parenting, Seattle, Teaching writing, vocabulary, Writing | Leave a comment

Ze is awesome: adventures with gender-neutral pronouns

Posted on March 19, 2014 by thefriendlymoth

English is missing a word. (Well, probably many words.) However, this is a really useful word: it’s a gender-neutral singular pronoun for people. In the good-old-boy days, they just said “he” but that’s not cool anymore, nor should it be. … Continue reading →

Posted in Language | Tagged American culture, Education, gender neutral pronouns, Grammar, Homeschooling, Language, Seattle, teaching poetry, Teaching writing, vocabulary | Leave a comment

I Hominid All Over the Place

Posted on December 20, 2013 by thefriendlymoth

So I was teaching my students about the word root of the word human a while back. You guys, it’s really cool. Did you know that the words human, humble, humus, hominid, humility, and humiliate all come from the root … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized, Word Roots | Tagged children, Education, Homeschooling, humor, Language, Seattle, Teaching, Teaching writing, vocabulary, Writing | Leave a comment