Learning to write

While we were at Target shopping for goggles I saw some workbooks about learning to write. There was one called "Tracing" and the other called "Letters". The tracing book has really cute pictures and the kids don't even realize that they are doing work. The system allows the kids to use a pencil to draw line through gradually narrower and narrower paths, and gets them to practice first straight up and down lines, then across, then diagonal, then curved, then more complicated curves. I let the kids alternate pages (one for Chloe, one for Alex) and Chloe did her half of the book in 2 days. She might have done the whole thing in one day, but my patience ran out before hers did. I could see her writing getting better. I’d tried to create worksheets on my own, but having them all together, in order, with gradually increasing difficulty was very helpful. Alex has done about half of the first book. He’s just not as interested. On the second day of using the book, he decided to put his pencil in his left hand for the first couple of pages. I didn’t comment on it and let him do the deciding, but he was clearly better at using his right hand and after a while he switched back on his own.