Magic E, silent at the end of a word, most notoriously makes a vowel say its name, or long sound. Its powers do not stop there! We learned that in addition to making 'c' soft, it can also make 'g,' which usually makes a hard /g/ sound as in 'ghost,' say a soft /j/ sound. It does so, for example, in "age," "huge," and "change."
This catchy G and C shanty helps us remember the conditions under which these letters *usually* make their soft sounds. Remember, of course, English loves to break its own rules, so these patterns apply most of the time.
Games to Practice
Click the picture below to play a match-up game practicing the soft g (_ge) spelling pattern:
Click the picture below to challenge yourself with anagrams! Can you unscramble the _ce and _ge words correctly?
Heart Words to Review + Magic E Exceptions
This week the students brought home a list of recently learned heart words, as well as words that are high frequency exceptions to the "magic e" spelling pattern. We learned that no English word ends in just "v," which is why there are short vowel words that end in _ve, where the e is silent, such as "have," or "live." We also learned about the "Scribal O." It is speculated that a long time ago, words like "love," "some," and "done" were spelled with a U but the scribes (the people whose job it was to write all the words down) had a hard time reading the U next to letters that looked similar. So, in these words they changed U to O to make it easier to read.
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