Work of the Week Wednesday!
Its only kindergarten, but Rory brings home an amazing amount of "work" every week....things she's cut, pasted, printed, taped, painted, stapled, etc. Soren brings home some stuff, but its mostly pictures she's drawn during center-time. Soren's "work" is generally things she does at home while Rory is practicing her requisite skills. Each Wednesday we will feature Rory's pick-of-the-week from her school folder, and a piece of "work" that Soren has completed.
A disclaimer: This week, I picked the Work of the Week, only because I had a meeting at church last night and got home after the girls were in bed, and then had to solve a breakfast issue with Rory (check back tomorrow for that story) before she went to sleep, so I didn't have time to let her go through her folder. Next week they'll pick their own, I promise!
This week, Mrs. Bousselot (Rory's teacher - a sweet, soft-spoken woman who has already dealt with the Maricle Mom phone call/email issues of spilled-milk-in-a-book-bag and my-daughter-wants-no-gravy-for-hot-lunch), sent home a packet explaining how we can help our kids practice writing their name consistent with how they are learning it at school (i.e., "the kindergarten way"). They use a program called Handwriting Without Tears. This was also used in preschool, and it starts out teaching them how to write in all capitals, then switches them to lower case, hence "the kindergarten way." (Its crazy-confusing to switch them like that, if you ask me, but whatever.)
Rory is pretty good at writing her name, but has had trouble adjusting to keeping it on a line (they never had to put it on a line in preschool...isn't that weird?), and has had a bit of trouble getting the slant of the "y." So we practiced. Rory instructed me on how the practice session should go.
It sounded like this:
"First you draw these happy faces with a line after them."
"Then, you write my name with a yellow marker on the top two lines."
"Then make dots where I should start my letters."
"Then I trace your yellow marker, and do the rest by myself."
She had an example that Mrs. Daniel, the classroom associate, had helped her with, so I could see how it was done.
But Rory also dictated how the reward/praise system should go:
"Then when I'm done, you ask me which one I think I did the best on."
"Then you put a little sticker next to the one I say."
She likes consistency, I guess!
Scroll down to the bottom for pictures of how they came out in the end. Not bad. I have Soren trace the yellow highlighter as many times as she's willing (I think the most she's done at once is 10 or 12). She also does not do too badly. And you can see, I'm starting Soren out with the lower-case letters on a line, just to see what happens. If she ends up in military school, you can say "I told you so."
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