Friday, April 12, 2013

Teach Your Child To Write - A Beginner's Writing Notebook

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This post contains an affiliate link to a product I love.

My little girl is turning 3 this month.  For the past year she has loved coloring, cutting paper, gluing things, etc.  She has incredible fine motor skills.  These two things coupled together led me to begin teaching her to write letters a little over two months ago.  She is doing an amazing job, and I wanted to share with you what I have been doing with her.

This is a simple, no-hassle, no fancy curriculum needed, way to help your child (at whatever age they are ready!) learn to write.  It is the very first form of copywork; simply mimicking correctly written letters.


Just before I began teaching Mackenzie to write her letters, I bought a really simple book binding system (that I'm in love with!) so I just HAD to make up a writing notebook for her.

The idea was to have her learn a new letter each day we did school work, practice previously learned letters, and also master letter sounds along with it.  So, I printed these {free!} A-Z Handwriting Worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler and on the back of each page I printed these {free!}blank Beginner Handwriting Sheets from Classical Copywork.



Here is what we do

  1. Review the previously learned letters by looking at each page in the book she has already done.  I turn the pages and she tells me the name of the letter and what sound it makes.
  2. Learn how to write the letter by tracing over the letters and letter parts on the A-Z Handwriting Worksheet for the day.  
  3. Practice writing the letter on her own.  I write one uppercase and one lowercase example for her on the blank Beginner Handwriting Sheet on the opposite page and she does her best to copy it across the line.  Some letters she caught onto quickly and others took practice over many days.
  4. Review writing previous day's letters.  I write letters on the rest of the lines for her to practice with.  Sometimes I pick the more difficult ones that she needs extra practice on and other times I let her pick which ones she wants me to write.
 


This process does not take long each day and it is really working well!  In just two months, she can write and give the sound for almost every letter.  I love the idea of having it all in a book like this because it is easy to review the previous letters, everything is in one place, and I don't have to print out a new sheet every day.  I'm going to have a post up soon about the book binding system I've been using and how simple it is to use!


I encourage you to try making up a notebook like this for your child if they are ready to begin learning how to write!

8 comments:

  1. Look forward to your post about the book binding system! I am looking for notebooking pages for Tyler and it may just be more cost effective to make my own!

    Btw, Great Job, Mackenzie!! Your handwriting looks beautiful!!

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    1. Mackenzie says 'Thanks' =) I really enjoy making different pages, so I usually just create what I want. A lot of people offer pages for free, too, so you can definitely try searching for want you want too! Have you been to www.http://notebookingfairy.com/ ? Her stuff might be for older kids, not sure.

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  2. Great job, as always! Also looking forward to the book binding post!

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  3. I made a letter book with my oldest but I have been meaning to make one with my youngest yet. Looks nice!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you. You should definitely make another one! They are so helpful and nice because you make exactly what you want.

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  4. This is such a great post. When I first started, I spent a small fortune on handwriting worksheets for my children. I would like to invite you to share this post on my Money Saving Monday link up.

    Thank You,

    Stephanie

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! Yes, I love making my own things because it usually is cheaper, plus I end up with exactly what I want. I'll go check out your link-up right now! Thanks for the invite =)

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  5. Oops! I just accidentally deleted a comment from "Moms Have Questions Too" so I'll write it here:

    "This looks so professional. I don't like making things like this myself because they usually end up looking flimsy and just weird. This looks really nice though. I can definitely see myself making something like this for my kiddos."

    Thanks for the kind comment...sorry I deleted it =)

    ReplyDelete

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