Pre-writing skills - 27 Aug 09

Over the past few weeks, I've taken photos of some of his work from his pre-writing (fine motor) skills activities.



The photo's a bit small & I dont have PhotoShop to make it easy to indicate what I want to highlight. On the left of the mat, there's an outline of his left hand. It was taken on 12 Aug 09. That was the second time he could trace the outline of his hand by himself. The 1st time was a few days prior to this, on the whiteboard. I was so happy! It's progress for him cos in the past I had to hold his right to show him how to trace the outline of the left hand.


I think the inventor of this Aqua Doodle is simply great! It's a fabric mat & comes with a marker child-sized pen. The pen doesnt contain ink. Instead, you uncap it & fill up with plain tap water. When the water from the pen touches the mat, the mat gets wet & that becomes your markings. The blue colour of the markings on the mat comes from the backing sheet of the mat which is blue. The white top sheet absorbs the water temporarily & when it dries off, the markings disappear. You can't erase it yourself. You just let the water dry.



You can leave him to scribble away without worrying about him getting ink on the floor, on the walls etc. It's just plain water, not ink. You can see why I think it's great! It's also a fun & pleasant change to paper & pen for writing skills practice. It has the alphabets on the border of the mat, which allows kids to learn to write by tracing over. I've seen it at Carefour & Jusco for just under RM50 (cheaper during sales at Jusco).



This photo was taken on 16 Aug 09. He was seated on the floor & I was holding the book. But when I took the photo, the book was on his lap. I didnt help him adjust his tripod grip/mature pencil grip lower towards the nib.

'Wipe clean' books are fun too. This version has thick chunky pages which will withstand a toddler's rough handling. It doesn't contain the typical pages of alphabet writing for practice. Instead, it's has pictures, supposedly for kids to learn to draw. Uhm, I'm not sure if that's a good way to teach kids drawing (especially after what I learnt at SEGi Appreciation Day workshops). When I bought the book, my purpose was for him to practice his pre writing skills in a fun way (ie. in a way that he doesnt even realise it's for writing practice).

From my recent weeks of "Project Clear Out", I realise I've collected various bits & bops of 'trash'. Amongst the things I rediscovered were old milk tin/tin container covers of different sizes & colours & material (plastic & metal). It's fun & cheap & it's "green" (reuse part of the reuse/reduce/recycle).

Since I recently read up about the use of insets in the Montessori syllabus, I showed him how to 'play' with the covers. Basically it's helping him trace the outline of the tin/plastic covers. It's similar in concept to tracing the outline of his left hand. To make this fun, I arranged the covers to resemble Mickey Mouse/the Playhouse Disney Channel logo. I then asked him to fill in with eyes, nose & mouth. At the end, to get in practice in writing letters, I had him trace over the word "MICKEY" at the bottom right of the page. Photo was taken on 22 Aug 09.

Notice how the outline in purple can be easily seen. That's cos I was helping him trace & I applied pressure on the colour pencil. When he drew the eyes, nose, mouth & traced over the name, it's barely visible. That's cos he has difficulty in controlling the amount of pressure he puts on the pencil. If he were to use a marker pen, it would be very easily seen, as illustrated below. It's a result of his CP.

A few months ago introduced letter writing sheets for practice. It was in preparation for school (nursery). I don't force him. I stopped doing it with him a while back, for reasons that I forgot (perhaps when he was sick). I brought out this sheet about 3-4 days ago. He wasnt interested in filling it up. So just left it lying around on his table. Today, (27 Aug 09) he willingly did it by himself under the supervision of my helper to make sure he got his strokes right. When he completed it (using a marker pen), he happily ran & showed me.



He needs to work on capital 'M' but I suspect the paper might have been too far away from him as this might explain the untidy writing on the first 2 rows & the decent looking M at the last row. I was very surprised with the neatness of his lower case 'm'. I think I was happier than he was!





This was taken on 25 Aug 09. It not only requires him to trace over the outline, but to follow the sequence of the alphabets. It's a variation of the common 'join the dots' using numbers. He gets to practice several skills at one go (hand eye co-ordination, tripod grip, visual, reinforce his alphabets).



These worksheets are available for free at http://www.learningpage.com/. Very useful site containing creatively designed sheets & ideas for activities with kids from preschool upwards. Each page states the skill set targetted (e.g. shape recognition, recognising numbers 1-5), level targetted (e.g. preschool, K1). It's also presented by themes (e.g. there are 50 odd pages for Preschool kids under the ocean kingdom theme).