Copying it down

Attending kindergarten has given him practice in copying from the whiteboard unto his book. He’s come to the stage that he’s able to copy the day and date by himself. It’s only on the odd occasion that he misses out some letters, for e.g. Wednesday, which is a long word or when he’s in a hurry to pass up his work.

Those are familiar words to him and it’s copying just one word at a time. So far in kindergarten, he’s not had to copy more than one word at a time (e.g. a sentence or a few sentences). I suppose they’ll gradually build him up for it next year.

About a week ago, he decided to copy the Days of the Week chart I had stuck on his cupboard door. I didn’t initiate it. I merely gave him a blank piece of paper, with which I intended to use for a different activity.

He wasn’t seated in front of the cupboard. His table was at the side of it. So he had to keep getting up from his table, walk across his mattress, to the cupboard, and return to the table to write it down.

I thought he did fairly well - he had to store it in his head for a few seconds longer compared to if it were in front of him. I stayed with him only to see him write Monday, and left him to do the rest.

There were 7 words to copy and he missed out Wednesday initially. When I pointed it out to him, he inserted it in the right order, but misspelled.

The other misspellings were actually not so bad because the misspelled words still sounded phonetically close. Th-r-s-day sounds right tho it should be spelt Thursday. Sat-e-day sounds possible too if the “e” is the BM way of sounding out “e” as in “emak”. It makes me wonder if he’s not just using his sight to copy but also using his knowledge of phonics in the copying process.

He wanted to add the title just like I did for his chart. I now think it’s important to add a title to things I put up. Again there’s a misspelt word in the title: “Days” is written as “das” which is phonetically correct if the “a” is sounded out as the long vowel “a”.