Daisy has begun working on lower case letters more earnestly at school and we are supporting this at home. She finds upper case letters much easier and has to be reminded to use lower case letters. Gentle reminders and modelled examples of writing help.
She was struggling with writing on a line so it was time to give more help with the ‘sticks and circles’ we call writing.
I cut up a sentence strip into word-sized strips and taped it onto the light table. The light table makes everything appear cheerier but it is not necessary for this activity.
The alphabet line behind shows both upper and lower case letters. If your children are not familiar with upper case letters, sticking to the lower case might be better.
The alphabet line is coloured with Chubbi Stumps, (my favourite crayon for wee hands):
- Blue = sky
- Green = grass
- Brown = dirt
The bottom three sentence strips are already coloured and the top two are for Daisy to colour.
We talked about how letters are mainly in the grass but some reach up to the sky and others reach down into the dirt. As we identified the letters we made a big (2′) letter with our arm and hand in the air.
Daisy then wrote her name and chose other words to write. She used her pinkie finger to ensure enough space was left between the letters.
There you have it: a colourful way to reinforce the position of lower case letters.
Sentence strips can be bought in many forms, even reusable wipe off versions are available now. Check out the options below:
What a wonderful idea! My children at this age loved to play gnome and fairy games. I can imagine making a whole story about the gnomes writing using the sky, the grass and the dirt. I expect I might have the fairies flying in to dot i’s and cross t’s. Gorgeous and fun. When I was teaching my children to write (they are now 18, 14, and 11) I hadn’t heard this story, but used the handwriting books found in Waldorf classrooms because it seemed to me that dividing the lines into 3 parts made sense, and those were the only books I could find that did so. Here is a link so you can see what I mean. (I am in no way affiliated with this company – I just found it on google to illustrate my point) I love that you coloured yours on your own, and found a way to make these distinctions for your little one – and I love how you turned this into a playful activity that draws the child in, rather than a coercive “we’re practicing now – sit down and write lines” kind of situation which so often leads to an “I hate writing” response from little ones. Thank you for your continued thoughtful posts.
http://shop.waldorf.ca/product.php?productid=2471&cat=84&page=2
Daisy would love the fairy link too. I am having the odd nibble at food she leaves out for the fairies at the moment!
Thanks so much for your feedback Pamela!