Saturday, October 18, 2008

Writing skills

I've been listening to friends who have chosen institutional schooling for their children talk about homework. I am stunned at how much handwriting is expected of even kindergarteners.

I don't know how anyone can expect a lot of handwriting from young children as I truly do not think that their fine motor skills are sufficiently well developed.

I've seen how my kids get really tired when I expect them to write out spelling words or do their math on paper. That's why I switched to white boards a while ago.



I find that the kids don't need as much fine motor control when they write on white boards and thus don't become as tired as quickly as they do when they use pen and paper.

In the above pic you see them working through their math. They were reading the instructions off the Professor B math program on my computer and then doing the problems on the white board.

When we do other lessons each child has his/her own board.

This is yet another reason I love homeschooling. It allows me the freedom to find solutions that work for my kids.

2 comments:

ChristineMM said...

I was advised and confirmed by my own trial that white boards and those markers write faster and are slippery. Therefore they are considered by some 'experts' to NOT be good for teaching young children to write. One of the pro's, 'they say' of pencil to paper is that it makes a slower movement due to the way the graphite grabs the paper.

Also those write-on, wipe-off books they have are therefore 'not good'.

Well we have to do what works for us and sometimes our experience tells us that what the experts say is not true.

Do what works for your kids.

A bigger issue IMO is to teach them proper grip using 3 fingers.

Your kids are so cute!

AliceNorthernLights said...

I learned to write at the age of 4 (right handed) and I always had trouble both at writing and at drawing. This until 5 years ago, when I considered to use my left hand too (as i noticed using the left wasn't that hard as often single-handed people say).
Since that, my drawing skills and my writing skills, with general coordination, improved a lot in both hands, and The only problem is I still have wrong pengrip in my right hand.