What Led Us to Homeschooling?
I have been wanting to share about Jackson’s handwriting experience for a long time now. This was our (both mine and John’s) biggest concern for Jackson going into kindergarten. We worried that without extra time and attention, he would not be able to keep up with the other kids in his class (he was supposed to enter a regular kindergarten classroom) and soon become discouraged and depressed. And where discouragement comes, absolute refusal soon follows.
I had also already seen in one of his Pre-K classrooms that his teachers were unable to MAKE him do an activity if he didn’t want to do it. I needed to make sure that his handwriting was something that he practiced everyday. Now granted, I could have spent the extra time at home with him after school to practice his handwriting, but that soon would become tedious work during his much-needed down time. And I found that during the COVID shutdowns it was extremely hard for me to follow someone else’s lesson plans.
Can I just say how THANKFUL I was that we had made the decision to homeschool well in advance so that I had time to process, carefully pick out curriculum and prepare myself for the daunting task. When the COVID hysteria carried on into the next year, I couldn’t imagine having to make such an important decision so abruptly. And to even think how it would have been had we kept him in school with ever changing schedules and routines, and required to wear a mask! That’s too much to ask for a special needs child, much less any child!
How Did We Tackle Handwriting?
Growing up my mom used the Sing, Spell, Read and Write curriculum so I wanted to use it with my kids. To this day I can remember the songs that we sung to help us practice our vowels and blending sounds. But I soon discovered that for Jackson, practicing his handwriting was extremely stressful and frustrating. I could barely get him to finish an entire page of tracing letters. He always demanded me to help him (which meant me leaning over him holding onto his hand while he held onto the pencil). And his letters were still reversed and confusing to read. So what could I do to make this easier???
In several of my homeschooling groups on Facebook, I had seen this curriculum called Handwriting Without Tears being used a lot. I always thought that the title was a bit ostentatious. But I decided to take a look at it. This program actually used several different forms of manipulatives to help the student feel and learn the shape of the letter…correctly. I especially appreciated how there were verbal instructions that were simple, repetitive and often in song form. So I took the plunge and purchased a new curriculum mid-year!
Hands-On Learning to the Rescue!
I try as much as possible to use hands-on learning for my kids. So wouldn’t it make sense that their handwriting instruction incorporated that too? YES!!! When I ordered a kit for 1 student, it contained a set of blocks for capital letters, a small chalkboard, a foam mat, tiny sponges, chalk pieces and short pencils. The teacher’s manual provides several games to get the kids comfortable with the blocks and the terminology used with them. Some games provide spatial awareness. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the games because I knew that Jackson would get bored with them quickly. But I will probably use them quite a bit next year with Angela.
This program starts with only the capitals because they have the simplest strokes and are the same size. The kids LOVE singing and dancing to the songs that focus on specific strokes. Then I’ll guide them with specific phrases to make the capital letter with the wooden blocks and then with the chalkboard. After that comes actual paper and pencil. By this time, Jackson is eager to try out the specific strokes himself!! I may need to guide him in the beginning for a new letter, but he actually fusses at ME because he wants to do it!! You can see the difference in the picture below. Jackson wrote all the letters independently.
Instead of following the program’s layout, I continued Jackson onto numbers instead of the lowercase letters because his numbers were almost unrecognizable. And he uses them a lot for his math, of course. We just finished going through numbers 1 – 10. You can see the difference within one calendar month below.
I am so grateful and so pleased that I switched Jackson to this new program. His handwriting has made incredible improvement! And I can’t wait to continue on to lowercase letters, to see his improvement there and also just to see his confidence and precision continue to increase overtime.
Below is his overall improvement from the beginning of the year to now. You can also notice where his pressure (the lines are darker) has improved too. That was something he really struggled with, too, because of his poor fine motor skills.
Coffee, Swings & Dinosaurs 