The start of Wimbledon, the throne of tennis.

 Try a few online games of tennis here, here and here

 Or get some good coaching videos for young players HERE

For tea love?

“You’ve got to get to the stage in life when going for it is more important than winning or losing”

Arthur Ashe

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I often encourage children not to worry about their spellings. I explain that that doesn’t mean “Argh! Don’t worry about your spellings e.g. DOG with a spelling of G. Q. W. H. U.G. 32 Zs and a K.

Instead it means “Don’t WORRY about your spellings”, in other words don’t allow a fear of making mistakes stop you from getting a classic idea, or piece of literature, down on to paper.

On that note, I found this remarkable poem recently, by “Author Unknown” It really does illustrate how ridiculous English spellings are.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I!  Oh hear my prayer.
 
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
 
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
 
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
 
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does.  Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
 

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
 
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
 
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
 
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
 
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
          
Pronunciation
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
 
Finally, which rhymes with enough
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Try Dr. Grammar or Spellodrome (the spelling version of Mathletics)

Here is a set of memory aids to help you with 100 of the most often mispelled misspelled words in English.

There are, of course, many differences between English and American spellings!

Try Compact Oxford English Dictionary for Students including their top 10 spelling tips.

There are also the great How to Spell Ridiculous, How to Spell Separate, and d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com

Have phunn!

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”.

“It is raining cats and dogs here, so much so that I just stepped in a cliché”.     

Geoff Staines, (A steamed Cousin!)

“His cooking isn’t exactly Cordon Bleu. It is more Cordon Noir”

After the Hertfordshire ICT conference, I had an e-mail from Geoff Bannister, of Hobbs Hill Wood Primary School, saying “The doorways of doom was a great concept. I’ve spent the last couple of days creating my own ‘Doorways’ type-thing for my school website.”

Dare you take the challenge HERE?

Geoff has also taken up the idea of an interactive tour of the school and made his own virtual tour of Hobbs Hill Wood Primary.

Geoff wrote: “Taking the idea from the graphic adventures of old, I created a virtual tour of my entire school. Imagine the magestic vistas seen in Myst, but instead of being set in a weird “alien” world, it’s set in a primary school in Hemel Hempstead.

There’s no problem solving, or any cleverly incorporated videos of characters, but surely it’s just as awesome! Or maybe not.(It’s a shed load of linked pages not dissimilar to your doors of doom.)”

Well done and thanks Geoff! You definitely deserved the Lego Darth Vader we managed to find for you!

Happy Prosperous Year Of The Rat 2008

Just shows how a great (and simple) theme can be transposed into any culture.