Spelling & Writing

We have been working with the pink series in language and the girls are finally finding routine to the cycle we do.  Knowing this I added an additional step of handwriting practice after completing the usual.  So we matched the word to picture first. If Lily is not interested in finding it herself I give her a choice of 2-3 different pictures for each word. Lately it’s been two.  Maggie gets 2 choices too. I think it helps them to focus better on the word and letter sounds this way too.  After matching these we use the moveable alphabet and spell the word.  Then we use the handwriting without tears board to write the word with chalk.  Maggie is very good at copying everything.  She does this with letters, numbers, pictures and coloring.  She loves to color pictures with resemblance to the thing she is coloring   She mixes colors to incorporate the shades of things.   When it comes to numbers and now letters, lately she has spent less time looking for a model to write by and has written down certain letters of the alphabet without hesitation.  This tells me she’s memorizing them.  Knowing what they look like & making the hand motor plan their shape are two very different things.

Lily is still needing hand over hand assistance to complete writing.  But she is moving her hand now without resurgence and moves it accordingly to the things being written.  I can feel her hand taking off and over now though she asks me for help.  Quite often if I let go her hand follows the appropriate direction it should be going.  Her spelling is excellent.

After we spell words out with the moveable alphabet we write the words down on a handwriting without tears double lined chalkboard.  Maggie is doing great with the double lines but I do notice confusion when presented with standardized lined paper so we may change that.  Or just practice with both and see how it goes.

Lily writes in both cursive and print.  I just flip the board over and we do each.  Maggie has just gotten a serious interest in writing in cursive the last time we did sand letters.  She liked the curves.

After writing the word out on the chalkboard I took standard wide ruled children’s paper and we write the word with pencil on paper.  This added that step I was telling you about. But they sat through it.  And actually enjoyed it.  Maggie even practiced letters she couldn’t get down quite right or harder ones.  Lily looked forward to writing both in cursive and print.