My son Jack Jack is 5 and he absolutely HATED writing at the beginning of the school year! In-fact at the beginning of the school year he would throw a fit every time I tried to help him write anything. He absolutely despised d’s and b’s and was confused by m’s and n’s. I had to come up with a better plan. I tried printing off worksheets with the dots that showed him where to go when he wrote the letters. I tried teaching him exactly how to write each letter, but if it wasn’t perfect he was so frustrated. So this is what I did. Every morning my kids write in their journals. For Jack Jack I bought him one of the notebooks that has a space at the top to draw a picture. I started out writing in it for him while he dictated what is should say, and then he would just draw the picture Then I started having him write some words, but he was still frustrated. I was visiting my sister a few weeks ago and she told me that a friend she knew used a highlighter to highlight her daughter journal so her daughter could go over it with her pencil. I decided to try it….and he LOVES it! I started out just having him do a couple of words and I would write the rest. Now I trade off sentences. It was been so much better and he is getting a lot happier about writing!!
The next big issue was how he was holding his pencil. I haven’t ever really had this problem because my older kids just did it right! But Jack Jack likes to do things his own way, and the way he was holding his pencil was making his writing REALLY squiggly. So that is when I dug down deep into my brain and came up with Superhero Fingers…because Jack Jack loves Superhero’s!
Superhero Fingers- Ok this might be totally silly, but it works. Jack Jack holds his pencil horribly wrong. His pointer finger is in the middle of the pencil and he is holding the pencil with his thumb and three other fingers. I told him that his pointer finger (i.e. Superhero finger) really wants to be down there with the other fingers because he is the strongest finger along with his thumb. And together those two fingers along with his middle finger, that likes to lay down in behind the pencil, always help make his writing look better. I also told him the pinkie and ring finger are really lazy and not very strong so they need to not touch the pencil but just lay down behind the middle finger. He really liked the idea of having a finger be a “Superhero” so now every time I say Superhero finger he fixes it.
Anyway, I am no expert in this, but it has worked for us. Have you found anything that has worked for you in teaching your kids to write and enjoy it? Leave me a comment and let me know. I am always up for great ideas!!
Great ideas! I know my boys totally struggled with wanting to write at that age too. Have you tried handwriting apps? My 5th has been doing those and he seems a lot more excited to write letters at age 4 than my older boys. My girl, well, she just loves to write so it was never an issue for her. Those fine motor skills are tricky.
I think you have great ideas. I feel that learning to write is so important. I feel sad that there isn’t more emphasis on having good hand writing in the schools.
Blessings!