Letters to Cornmeal

Handwriting without Tears. I'd seen the totes around town and heard about the curriculum, but I was skeptical. What could be so difficult about teaching handwriting? Plenty, sister, plenty.

After another tearful episode of handwriting horror, I stumbled across this link, which is full of great suggestions. Today, I put a pan full of cornmeal in front of DD and let her write and draw away. She really enjoyed playing around with it and even said she liked it because if she made a mistake, she could just erase it and start again. Music to my ears. I think I'll only pull this out once or twice a week; I don't want her to get tired of it.

I've finally realized that she'll happily write on anything in any medium as long as it can be easily erased. I think she also likes to have more control over what she is writing. It has to have meaning for her before she'll get excited about it. We'll experiment with more creative handwriting practice; we just won't use lined paper or ink/crayon/markers.

We also did another FIAR lesson with Madeline today. Although we talked a good deal about the details in the story (which is a habit I need to reestablish), we focused on a math activity today. We counted out 48 chips arranged in 4 groups of 12. I asked her to arrange one set of chips into groups of 2s, another into groups of 3s and another in groups of 4. The last set of chips she was to arrange symmetrically (12 little girls in two straight lines). She had some difficulty separating the idea of 12 chips into smaller groups. Although some of the difficulty could be attributed to the developmental phase she's in right now, I definitely struggled to present it to her. I think we would both benefit from a math curriculum that has detailed, step-by-step instructions. Ironically, her interest in math has given me greater confidence. I'm actually excited about working through it with her, as opposed to last year's rank fear.