About the Author

   I grew up in a word-loving family. My parents were missionary linguists stationed in a remote jungle village in Papua New Guinea. They analyzed a previously unwritten language, developed an alphabet and writing system, introduced literacy and translated a large portion of the Bible into the language. Words and linguistics were discussed and enjoyed in our family on a daily basis.

   I was eventually drawn toward linguistics myself and earned a BA in Applied Linguistics at Trinity Western University. Linguistics is like a playground for an analytical personality and I enjoyed the subject thoroughly. I was nearing the completion of my degree and still trying to figure out how linguistics would figure into my life’s work when I met my husband. After we got married, I worked at the Canada Institute of Linguistics until our first child was born.

   My life was about tiny children for the next few years. Those who have raised small children know what a linguistically rich time this can be. It is a time of attunement between parent and child. All sorts of meaning is passing between human beings, verbally and nonverbally. A parent gets to see the subtle moments of sudden understanding on a child’s face long before they can verbalize what they are thinking. Then they get to watch as language is acquired, a natural instinctive process that materializes differently in every child.

   During these preschool years, I started a home-based business and wrote and illustrated a children’s book, The Parable of the Field Mouse. Attached at the hip to my two growing boys, I was constantly aware of their development, experiencing their moments of insight and broadening worldview along with them. Soon they reached school age and we inched our way into the adventure of homeschooling, still building on a foundation of attunement. One of my sons was a natural speller. He thrived in the world of words, read with comprehension and absorbed the spelling of words from reading. My other son loved words as well and had a broad vocabulary but was the sort of person, like me, that wasn’t keen to learn something unless it meant something to him and he understood the reasoning behind it. Asking him to simply memorize the spelling of a list of words yielded no progress. The information would leave his brain almost as soon as it arrived. He needed to understand the system in which he was being asked to operate.

   I searched for spelling curriculum with a rules-based approach. The resources I found lacked linguistic insight and offered rules with too many exceptions to be helpful. This book began as a sort of log of spelling patterns that were actually reliable and useful. Rules that failed were thrown out and new ones emerged as I dove deeper. Spelling With Understanding was born.

   If this book has been helpful for you, I would appreciate your positive review or recommendation on social media or Amazon.

Find out more about my other projects and products at my website!

If you’d like to contact me, feel free to send an email.