I found a fun tool to practice writing
Today I had to return a dress that didn't fit my daughter, and as I was hunting for a few other items in that shop, I was looking around in all the aisles. My eye fell on this box:
It's in Hungarian, but what's inside is clear even for someone that doesn't know how to read the text. Inside are cards with all the letters of the alphabet on it, tracing the letters is possible thanks to the whiteboard marker, which can be erased afterwards as well. So even if many mistakes are made, don't worry, just erase it all and start over.
I thought this was a good thing to buy, it only cost about 4 bucks and I love the fact that you can see a word in Hungarian for each letter as well. Meaning that we can practice some fun words which she may hear at the kindergarten over time as well.
It's actually a win-win situation for us both, not only will she be able to practice the letters of the alphabet, but also learn about some words that start with that letter. I can learn something too here, because my Hungarian is as rusty as our car, haha.
Let's check out the cards inside the box
I expected the cards to "work" like flashcards which I learned about during my TEFL course, so when you are halfway through the alphabet, you flip the cards and continue towards the end on the back of the cards. This wasn't the case here, they were randomly printed on the cards. Oh well, we won't use them all in one day anyway so I will take out those that we need each time.
I love the cute colours on the cards and I also love that they use capital and lower case letters, also taking into account how to "glue" them together to be a full word. My daughter hasn't practised these yet, so these curly ends on the letters are completely new to her. It's fun that you can see the word written that matches the image on top of the card.
There are also a few blank cards so that she can practice writing words there. Currently, she uses crayons and a blackboard to copy words from a note. So this will be a new way to practice writing full words. I honestly have no idea if she's fallen far behind or not at all due to this pandemic situation and also the language issue we are all facing here. I'm trying to not worry and believe all will work out fine as we will be moving to Spain anyway next year. If needed, we will have to put in some extra work, but I don't want to overload her with tasks as she's also allowed to enjoy a bit of summer. At least she's still very interested in learning new things, so we'll get there one way or the other.
Let's get started!
It's time to check how much she remembered from the last lessons we did writing the alphabet. I expected her to have no issues writing the first row of the letters as these are those she practised most, but those with the curly ends will probably be confusing.
It turns out that I was right on that matter, as you can see the letters seem a bit "shakey". This was caused by the marker combined with her not making the letter in 1 or 2 smooth moves but looking at the previous one to see how it was supposed to be written.
I'm not worried here, it's a matter of practice. I encouraged her to keep trying, and don't be discouraged if they don't look great yet as this is new to her and we will practice so that she will know how to write them the right way over time.
A few letters a day
I'm thinking, for now, to practice 3 letters a day with her, and have a little chat about the words that are in the images as well. I didn't let her try to write the words above in this first lesson, but I plan on adding that to the next lesson. I thought about how to make this easier for her to understand the lower case letters on the cards, and my personal conclusion was that if she writes the word in full, she will see how they are connected by doing so. As I'm a person that learns things by doing it, I have reasons to believe this may apply to her as well.
Conclusion
This was a fun way of learning how to write the letters, because of the cards and images added, we have enough material to do a ton of lessons using the same cards over and over again. I personally love this because if we use normal paper, a lot of paper is getting "wasted", while this way we have something more sustainable. I do wipe them right away after the lesson, because I think if I postpone it may be harder to clean them. I will write an update about the writing lessons once she has made some good progress. I love that these posts are also some sort of journal for us to read in the future without having to save a lot of workbooks but just by documenting it on Hive!
My question to other (homeschooling) parents
If you have a child about 5 years old, how are his/her writing skills currently? Do you feel they are where they should be? Not particular talking about the norm the schools take for measurements but more about the natural interest and level of a 5-year-old regarding writing..
She's getting more interest in the topic, but it's very recent. Before she didn't really care too much and was more focused on other things. I try to go with her flow a bit and take advantage of her interest in things as this pandemic period is already so overwhelming and weird for the current generation.
Thank you for your time and wishing you a lovely weekend!