The Joy Of Learning

Penmanship for Preschoolers

My preschoolers learn cursive handwriting from the beginning and can write in beautiful cursive after a couple of months of of training.

From the beginning, they are taught to see the phonogram and say its sound, then they are to write it without seeing it.  Both”writing” and “reading” the phonograms are vital and should be learned from the start. Many preschools have children practice tracing the letters. I am not opposed to doing this in early stages, but the physical dynamic of learning to shape letters is more important. Children may have the graphics of the letters in their memory like you store digital pictures in the xd picture card, but  writing out the letters from memory requires them to recall the mechanic of producing these letters . That’s why many cannot write out the letters from their memory even after they have trace them in the workbooks many times, they only remember the graphic, but their muscles do not have memory of the mechanical process!

While many young children do not have the motor skills for pencil and paper work but they can be given preliminary exercises in writing that use big muscles. If a child holds her dominant arm straight (no bend in the elbow) and points with two fingers, she can use her whole arm as a big pencil and learn to make the shape of phonograms in the air as she says their sounds.

My preschoolers also enjoy taking a slightly damp sponge and making their phonograms on the blackboard. The damp impression of the letter they made was visible when they finished. We would also do letters with finger paints. Before they ever did pencil and paper work, they had many hands on opportunities to shape letters using big muscles. We used chalks to write on the floor/sidewalk, we write on the sandpaper letters, write on the sand with their index finger. I would shape phonograms on their back and they have to guess what I wrote. Something happens mentally when the child goes beyond simply seeing a phonogram, or even tracing a letter, to when she can actually form the letter by herself. An exposure to forming letters independently is of first importance.

I have a reluctant writer who just transfered here after 2 years in a traditional preschool. Since she had to write and trace tons of workbooks with weak muscle in her former preschool, she hated writing and would avoid it at all cost. For the first four months, she would just do PLE and Sensorial. Starting May, I had her started with big muscle formation of letters, she is happily producing two or three pages of writing work on papers  right now. This weekend she even asked to bring home writing work to do over the weekend. Which I obliged, but told her mummy just let her do it if she wants to, but don’t force her to do if she changes her mind.

I will be sharing with you in the next few posts on how to teach penmanship with big muscle movements and upload some pictures once I got a digital camera. I hope to upload some pictures of their handwriting to share with you.  I am very proud with the neat handwriting they are able to produce and I think you will be impressed with 5 years old who can write original sentences in cursive.:-)

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