Mat Man

As part of the handwriting without tears program, we’ve been learning capital letters and how to write them.  Again, I hesitated to use this program because I felt that writing letters in print was much more difficult than writing in cursive.  But for Maggie’s sake of loving print I started the program.  Mainly because at the time Maggie was having a hard time lining up her letters to form words.  She couldn’t stay on the line.  I liked the paper with boxes the program had to offer.  Then Lily’s OT recommended I start it with Lily.  So here we are.  Lily enjoys the program because of the music and interaction.  The workbooks are effective with learning how to write in general and they cover lower case letters with the addition of the double lined chalkboard we’ve been using.  Pictured above is Mat Man.  We play a song which describes his parts.  As the song progresses I press pause and ask one of the girls to get the parts needed.  Example:  big curve, little curve, big line, little line.  This helps the kids identify the names of the parts for oral dictation later as they are practicing their writing skills.  Lily loves building Mat Man.  He always has a sad face until his body is complete.  I love how she adds an extra step to the story.  🙂 Maggie has really enjoyed the process also.  She quietly waits her turn and sings along to the song too.

We also focused on the date today.  I tried to revive circle time (the day of the week song) as the old song has become old to the girls.  I added the What time is it? Which the girls enjoy moving the clock around but I don’t think they have grasped the concept of what the time actually is at this point.  They do know the time of day.  But hours, minutes, and seconds seem to be more complicated than math they can hold in their hand.  They are understanding months because of the holidays that are in them and which comes next.  Easter is in April and they know that month comes after March.  St. Patrick’s Day is not exciting to them.  I’ll try to add some fun activities to gain their interest in the holiday.  If nothing else I’ll make it a green day of lots of color coordinated shades of green.  And we’ll study botany or something.