His whiteboard writing

He likes to “write” on the whiteboard. Usually it’s more scribbling rather than writing. Today he was in the mood to write lots. It’s a bit hard to see, so I took close ups of portions of it.

Here he wrote “Bens”. He meant Benz, as in Mercedes Benz. He loves cars, so I guess that’s to be expected. LOL

Here he wrote “hao is”. He meant “how is”. His spelling is wrong cos I’ve not moved on to the Montessori green level which teaches the phonic sound of “ow” (e.g. bow, cow, how). Also, he ran out of whiteboard space, so I don’t know what was the full question he wanted to write.


There were a lot of attempted writing of “how” on the board in various (wrong) spellings e.g. hoo, hao, haoo. But when analysed, some of it sounds phonetically close. For e.g. “haoo” – he still mixes up the English short vowel “a” with the BM “a” sound. I remember reading somewhere that at the early stage of learning phonics, writing, and spelling, it’s ok if the child’s spelling sounds phonetically plausible or close to the correct spelling. I corrected him gently while praising him for his attempts.

Here he spelt “book” correctly. Thanks to what was taught in music class! Obviously, he still has issues with the visual spatial aspects of writing – see how the word slopes down drastically, but I’m working on it.

This is his first sentence that he wrote all by himself! His writing is not legible, so I asked him what he was trying to write. Then I wrote it in blue ink, above his writing: “Home ini besar”. There’s a mix up of BM and English grammar and BM and English vocabulary. He meant to say “Rumah ini besar” or translated “this house is big”. Also “besar” was spelt “basar”.


I think he wanted to write “house” but got stuck with the spelling (the “ou” sound is also at the green level). The 2nd phoneme in the word “house” sounds just like the “ow” in “how”, so he wrote “ao” instead. It’s the same mistake I talked about a few paragraphs above.

He then switched to trying to write “home” (the “magic e” or the “silent e” is also at the green level). Maybe it’s time I start preparing material to teach him words from the Montessori green level!

At first, I was really impressed! I thought that he was expressing in writing what he felt of the house he’s staying in. I thought he thought of it all by himself, and chose to write it out. But as I wrote the paragraph above, I remembered that in school a week or two ago, teacher had the class write “Rumah ini besar” in their exercise books! LOL.

So, I was impressed for the wrong reason! But it does show that he did learn some things at school, even though he forgot the BM word for “house”.

This was the last thing he did on the whiteboard. Note that it’s an outline of his right hand. That meant that he held the marker in his much weaker left hand! It's progress for him!