Writing Letters

We are continuing to make progress with writing. I make little worksheets for her and we do them together. I draw purples lines on a plain white sheet of paper and then make dotted letters on the lines for her to trace with a soft yellow maker (so when she uses a pen the dots are not so prominently visible). I'm doing the letters in groups. For example, yesterday we did K, P, R, and D. I showed her how the R is a P at the top and a K at the bottom, so once she had mastered motions of the K and P the R was no problem. And the D is just like the P only with a bigger semicircle on the side. Next we are going to do E, F, and L. The F is an E without the bottom line, and an L is an E with only the bottom line, and so once she can do the E she can do any of these letters! She likes to take turns with me on the worksheets - I do a letter, then she does a letter, then me, then her, etc., etc. She is so proud of her work when she is done. She treats it like a special piece of art. I am, of course, super proud of her, too.

Stencils

We found another fun way to work on writing letters.  A friend of mine who is really into crafts just got a stencil maker, and she gave me her old stencil letter book.  It has lots of fonts, and my daughter has had a ton of fun making letters with it.

Writing letters

I finally stumbled across a method for teaching my almost 3 year old to write letters.  She's been trying for months and months, and so the will is there, but it has been difficult to actually form the letters well.  She just recently got the concept of "connect the dots," and I remembered those old workbooks from when I was in kindergarten in which they would have you trace the letter a few times and then make it on your own. So I made a connect the dots letter P with paint.  Something about using the paint and paint brush suddenly made it accessible.  It became a game.  I would make dots on the page in the order of a letter, describing the motions she would need to do to trace it (e.g., for a D - "line straight down, and a semi-circle to the side") and she would trace it.  We'd do it over and over.  She loves this game.   After doing this for awhile with paint, we moved onto pen and paper, with smaller letters.  Now she still can't construct a letter on her own, but she can trace the ones we have practiced perfectly.  And she thinks it is fun!