How did you introduce your child to writing?

[Brandi]

I'm trying to get my daughter ready for preschool by teaching how to write. After half an hour of trying she was close to tears and I needed to lay down. I took her hand and wrote "A" 10 times then I asked her to try it on her own she started singing and made a squiggle that corresponds to no english letter I know. We tried again and again. It was much the same with numbers. My daughter has always been a slow learner and needs a great deal of attention to grasp basic concepts like drawing a line and a circle (that was a 5mon lesson).

I don't know what to do at this point my almost one year old who I haven't been teaching sits behind me and does what I ask my almost 4 year old to do. I praise him and she seems to feel even worse can anyone please give me some advice?

 

[Ami]

She is a child. Children don't learn the same way adults do. Kids are not going to "study" letters and numbers like we studied during high school/college years.

You have to make it fun for her, and take it very slow! The key is teaching her little but often and it will take time. An hour is way too long!

Don't expect her brain to work like yours does. Of course she's not going to be able to write the letter 'A' the first few or more times she tries! They're going to come out as scribbles because she's still at the start of developing her writing skills. She's still developing the muscles in her hand for writing and she is still learning motor skills.

What you need to do is make it fun.

When you're teaching her, you should talk in a cheerful voice. You could grab different objects and get her to trace around them on a piece of paper, and then you could tell her that she had just written the letter 'D' - or whatever. She should be very happy with that. Make sure you praise her for all her little accomplishments.

When you go shopping, point out to any price tags you pass by, and ask her if she knows what letter/number that is.

You could get her to play with lego blocks and build letters and numbers out of those. Tell her to show her brother/other parent what she built.

Give her coloring pens to write with. Praise her lots and just have fun.

 

[armywife2004]

She sounds like my son, we figured out hes a combination of visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning. Meaning just one type of thing, like drawing the A over and over wasnt working for him. We had to draw the A over and over, talk about the lines that make an A, ( we would say while drawing it angle left down, angle down right and line across the middle) (finding riddles that make drawing letters easier, like my son couldnt figure out E and F, so he learned 3 is E (3 lines off the strait line for E) and then kinsethitic learning where we would go around the house looking for things with the letter A, or making the letter A from slices of paper (hands on stuff) Hope that helps you!!