Educational creativity

     Writing, for young children is a playful but purposeful activity.  Doing countless tracing worksheets will not teach a child to write and will probably discourage them from wanting to write.  Here  is a site that explains this concept well.  Teaching writing should also be playful and purposeful.  If you are interested in learning more about the stages of writing  look at this previous post.   Along with fun group lessons that help children learn to write letters, words, sentences, and stories, I use a writing center as a way to encourage writing, practice writing, and making writing purposeful.  I frequently visit this center to prompt new letter or word uses.  I try to encourage story writing, also.  This will help with reading skills.  If they can write their own story, they can read it back to you.      In the writing center, children always have access to writing material...

     I don't have a lot of experience with a specific writing curriculum, but I have acquired a lot of knowledge though observation, conferences, college classes, and reading.  I was very fortunate to have a really good language arts teacher in college.  She showed us how important real literature and writing go hand in hand to teach children to read and write.      Before a child is ready to write, Handwriting Without Tears , has shown that children progress in markings in a certain order.  First, side to side, then up and down, then a cross, then a circle, then a square, then a triangle.  This just states that diagonal writing is the hardest for little hands to make.  So, don't start writing with letter A.  When children start to assign meaning to their marks, then starts the real writing. I found this very neat worksheet somewhere and thought it was a good description for parents to look at.  I hang it up...

Some of you have probably heard of sand on a pan.  This is colored rice on a pan. This supports fine motor skills by encouraging children to use their pointer finger to make shapes, letters, or numbers.  It is a very tactile activity.  My daughter loved the way it felt on her fingers.