Understanding the structure of words

Word sums show the important elements of a word:

the BASE 

is the most important element 

because it holds the meaning and the spelling;

and

the PREFIXES and SUFFIXES 

which can be fixed before and after the base.

We have been investigating the word <friend> and why there is an <i> in the spelling.

Ask your child to tell you the story of <friend> and how it is related to <Friday> and the Germanic Goddess of Love <Frigga>!

This is the word sum for <friendly>:

friend + ly --> (this is called the rewrite arrow) friendly

We could also write the word sum like this:

fri (meaning 'love') + end (an Old English suffix) + ly (suffix)-->

friendly

We constructed a very large word sum by acting out the different parts of the word.

Then we wrote our own word sums from all the words we discovered were part of the word family.
Every time we write and spell a new word sum we are learning how to spell the base!