Alphabet & handwriting without tears
”
So we started out working on the alphabet this morning. It’s a hard situation because Lily has been taught primarily cursive (because of her speech school she was attending which is fantastic because in a motor planning perspective it’s just easier to write. She associates sounds or phonics with cursive. I’m finding she gets confused although not often when switching from print to cursive or vice versa. So I’ve been teaching print as Lily’s OT has suggested I start her on a program called handwriting without tears. We have the package but are missing the letter place cards so I’m holding off for a few days on the music CD & map man until those come in. Maggie does best with print. She doesn’t recognize cursive readily. Lily really seems to gave no oroblem at all transposing letters. Writing either is still difficult & requires hand over hand assistance.
The girls enjoyed setting up the alphabet with me first. They know their order well. We then matched the moveable to its case on the floor which is lowercase. Then found the matching uppercase letter. We talked about the name and the sound. Additionally, I pulled out a chalkboard to practice the DuBard way with lily in cursive. After matching the letters we sat at floor desks and with a chalkboard wrote the letter. I modeled it first. Then the kids wiped it off with a wet sponge. Lastly, writing the letters themselves. Maggie was very successful at her attempts. Lily surprised me with the ability to independently motor plan letters without assistance. The c was written although backwards. And e was attempted 3 times in a row perfectly on a line but again backwards. Overall, it was a great activity even though only a few letters were sorted out.
Above you see Lily’s c. Maggie’s t. Maggie’s e.
Lily takes breaks in between studies to hang out with Timber.
We started the process of growing our own bean plants today. The kids have been learning about the plant life cycle for some time now including the bean plant & oak tree. Our best focus is pumpkins & apples. Pumpkin he’s been on the shelves but apple hasn’t been left out yet.
The bean plant was a hit. I had their full attention. It was wonderful. I prepared a step by step instruction sheet for them ahead of time with simple instructions like 1. Fold paper towel, 2. Wet paper towel etc. so we followed through & started germinating our seeds. Prior to this we looked over the bean plant life cycle again to understand what we were working with.
We finished in our tree display matching tree parts to the tree & reviewing their parts with cards. We read again about the oak tree & cross compared the book to the felt board cycles putting them together accordingly. We also read through the tree book which gives wonderful descriptions of trees explaining where they are from, their leaves, bark, flowers etc.
Adapting Education 