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Nov. 14th, 2007 11:04 amDelia has been working on letters. She can write her name fairly clearly. Her C tends to look like a U or to be completely backward (I've been told that this is very common). Her O and D look a lot alike because she can't yet get the flat side on the D. Her R looks very like her current drawings of people, just without the facial feature. R has a circle with two legs coming off the bottom. She's doing I as a lower case letter, a line with a circle on top. I think she finds that easier than doing it with top and bottom lines. She also prefers a lower case L. The horizontal lines on her E are all smushed up near the top of the vertical line.
She's been working on letters in the context of writing words and writing the names of her classmates. Her pre-school did a fundraiser with a small book that has pictures of each of the kids along with their names and a bit of text modeled after the relatively well known Brown Bear book. That is, each page says, '[child's name], [child's name], who do you see? I see [other child's name] looking at me.'
Delia has been using this book to get the spelling of her classmate's names. She managed one name-- Ella-- without reference to the book or asking me for help. I was quite impressed.
Of course, when Delia finds that she can't make the pen do what she wants, she screams in rage. I've explained that she just needs to practice. Three weeks isn't all that long to have been working on controlling a writing implement. Her response, even as she kept trying to make a T that satisfied her (I thought it looked fine), was to shriek, "I don't *want* to practice!" (My mother states that I shouldn't worry when she hits the floor in frustration. Mom says that I used to bang my head when I couldn't do something right the first time.)
She refuses to use a pencil even though she likes the idea of being able to erase. I spent ten minutes last night explaining that the eraser wouldn't work on black ball point pen, no matter how hard she rubbed, that she had to write in pencil if she wanted to erase. She screamed protest because she wanted both pen and eraser.
At the parent-teacher conference last week, the only areas of concern that the teacher had were scissor use and grip on writing implements. I think that the latter is well on the way to resolution. On the scissors front, half of the problem is that I use scissors oddly. I almost always hold them upside down because I'm less likely to damage my thumb that way (spending weeks with half of my right thumb numb due to having over-used scissors while holding them 'correctly' is not something I ever want to repeat). I also haven't encouraged Delia to use scissors at home. I'm too afraid that she'll do what I did at her age and start cutting everything in sight. I'll probably have to risk that and start working with her on it.
After she's done screaming at her handwriting.
She's been working on letters in the context of writing words and writing the names of her classmates. Her pre-school did a fundraiser with a small book that has pictures of each of the kids along with their names and a bit of text modeled after the relatively well known Brown Bear book. That is, each page says, '[child's name], [child's name], who do you see? I see [other child's name] looking at me.'
Delia has been using this book to get the spelling of her classmate's names. She managed one name-- Ella-- without reference to the book or asking me for help. I was quite impressed.
Of course, when Delia finds that she can't make the pen do what she wants, she screams in rage. I've explained that she just needs to practice. Three weeks isn't all that long to have been working on controlling a writing implement. Her response, even as she kept trying to make a T that satisfied her (I thought it looked fine), was to shriek, "I don't *want* to practice!" (My mother states that I shouldn't worry when she hits the floor in frustration. Mom says that I used to bang my head when I couldn't do something right the first time.)
She refuses to use a pencil even though she likes the idea of being able to erase. I spent ten minutes last night explaining that the eraser wouldn't work on black ball point pen, no matter how hard she rubbed, that she had to write in pencil if she wanted to erase. She screamed protest because she wanted both pen and eraser.
At the parent-teacher conference last week, the only areas of concern that the teacher had were scissor use and grip on writing implements. I think that the latter is well on the way to resolution. On the scissors front, half of the problem is that I use scissors oddly. I almost always hold them upside down because I'm less likely to damage my thumb that way (spending weeks with half of my right thumb numb due to having over-used scissors while holding them 'correctly' is not something I ever want to repeat). I also haven't encouraged Delia to use scissors at home. I'm too afraid that she'll do what I did at her age and start cutting everything in sight. I'll probably have to risk that and start working with her on it.
After she's done screaming at her handwriting.
