I have always loved the idea of teaching my children and I feel that Filip is ready to begin something “more formal”. Well, he’s been asking for quite some time to do “school work”, so why not!! I was not quite sure where to begin and didn’t know exactly what Filip already knew so I did a mini assessment to help me work things out. I discovered that my little man can identify almost all uppercase and lowercase letters, can form some of the uppercase letters, or will try to write them, but is not yet able to form any lowercase letters. He knows to count from 1 to 20 and knows the basic colours and shapes. While he did pick up most of what he knows from Letter School and other educational apps, and his older brothers and sister, I like to think I had an input somewhere too 🙂
Now that I had a good idea of what he knew, it was time to decide what I wanted to teach him. The most important factor to keep in mind is that I won’t be homeschooling him for long – just until he starts Prep. The school he will be attending teaches children to read and write using a Phonics programme called LEM Phonics. So, it only made sense to begin our “formal learning” by learning letter sounds! I’ve also decided to teach him correct formation for both uppercase and lowercase at the same time. My eldest son struggled a lot with letter reversals in Grade 1 and I’d like to avoid that all costs with Filip. At this point in time, I will only be focusing on the letters of the alphabet as we will begin by spending 1 to 1 and half hours three times a week learning together.
And so our journey will begin soon with the first letter of the Alphabet!
Yah, you made a blod 🙂 🙂 so happy to find out!!!! I’ve been wanting to follow you – love your items on TPT.
My little one sounds to be around the same age as your son. We love to do the find the letter activities and color by sound items. I haven’t pushed the writing of letters because I’be focused in th sounds as well.
I’m sure you know, we have some apps tht have letter formation. Have you downloaded ‘reading raven’? Its one of my favorites 🙂
Mariela
I was just about to comment on your blog because I received a TpT notification about your response on feedback I left!! Haha! Small world 🙂 Yeah, we are really trying to focus on letter sounds, but my little man is an “explain-to-me-nothing” type of a person and I am having trouble getting him to focus for even 2 whole minutes when I explain a new activity! He LOVES his worksheets though, so that makes it easier as I don’t have to make too many new games and activities. Anyways… will definitely check out “reading raven”!
Don’t worry too much about the letter reversals. Its developmental. And we all know kids will be ready when they are simply ready.
Some of it is recognition and some of it is in the brain..crossing of midline.. visual sensory.. etc.. Take it from me who is dsylexic and has a few kids that are the same.
Its good to see you giving in to some of that nudging and posting a blog..Great to see you here Lavinia
Thanks for stopping by, Cynthia 🙂 And thank you so much for the reassurance about letter reversals!
Hi Lavinia, I love your work on TpT. Can say I’m a great fan of your worksheets.
My son is turning 4 this year. How do you capture their attention when they can’t even seat for 2 whole min.(for example: when doing colouring pages he will get so excited to colour but after a min or so he will say he is done – the truth is he not even 1/4 complete)
I look at your blog post on preschool letters and very impress by the holistic worksheets that your son are able to complete. Did you break into several session for him or he is able to complete worksheets after worksheets?
Looking forward to your kind advice.
Hi Rachel,
Filip is turning 5 in August. We have been doing seated table work since just before age 4 and he has always loved doing worksheets, colouring and being read to – I suppose he’s just one of “those” kids. We generally just do one worksheet/activity after another – and he usually complains and asks for more when I say that we’re all done for the day! He concentrates well and is always highly engaged. One problem we did have was that, when we first started doing table work, his fine motor muscles weren’t very well developed and he didn’t like colouring; we did lots of finger strengthening activities and, after a few months, I noticed an improvement in his colouring.
My eldest son, Alex, was completely different to Filip at age 4 and he couldn’t sit still for more than a couple of minutes at a time. He hated worksheets. He hated colouring. He hated reading. I couldn’t understand why he was this way and it made early “structured” or “worksheet” learning impossible. I thought that he could be “trained” into sitting for longer periods of time. Wrong. It just frustrated us both. I discovered he was a kinesthetic learner and, after reading up on his learning style as much as I could, I discovered that I shouldn’t push him into doing seated work until he was ready. We did lots of hands-on activities instead. At about age 5 and a half, he was ready to do seated table work for about 10 mins before he lost interest. He is now 9 and can sit for longer periods of time to work on tasks and complete worksheets, so, I guess, ability to sit still and concentrate for longer periods of time, is also developmentally linked.
I think your son is still very young and if he’s not ready for table work, my honest opinion is to let him play as play is SO beneficial to a child’s development and learning! I wish I had let me eldest son just PLAY instead of trying to push him into doing table work!
I wish you and your son great success on your learning journey 🙂