Advice on teaching handwriting?

[Acinonyx]

My 3 yr-old dd spends a lot of time drawing and colouring and her pen control is very good. She has been drawing occaisional letters and numbers for about a year. Recently though, her eagerness to write has exploded. Her letters look absolutely fine BUT she writes them all bottom up (and she's left-handed).

She will not take insturction from me: 'I do things differently' but she has been known to trace dotted/arrowed letters in magazines so I think that might be the way to go. I think I have to actively teach her how to write properly before this habit becomes thoroughly ingrained. I'm not really sure about how to do that though and I wonder if anyone has some advice or recommendations.

She is not at preschool but has a CM 3 days/week. We were talking about this this morning as CM gave me a note dd had 'written' for me. CM said she can't stop dd writing but she's not allowed to actively teach it - it's against OFSTED.

It seems bonkers to me that childminders feel they have to do what unqualified inspectors from Ofsted say, rather than parents. If you've never been a CM, or used one, how are you in a position to judge them?

Of course she can teach writing if she wants to, she just doesn't do it at an inspection!

what about getting her (daughter, not cm!) the jolly phonics workbooks? Only about £1 or so, and eachletter is traced with the beginning marked and the direction with an arrow.

I agree that it's best not to let it become ingrained.

NB only my opinion - no background in education at all! but this is what worked for my dd

It seems bonkers to me too. CM has SO much more authority with dd than I do I'm sure she'd take her instructions more than mine.

I've heard about the Jolly Phonics stuff but hadn't thought about it for writing rather than reading. Must have a look at it.

I really just can't understand why someone should be told they are not to teach a child to do soemthing when they are already doing it themselves and clearly need some guidance

You can buy these roller letter things which are meant to be good at showing the direction of the letter. I also like jolly phonics. The direction of the letter is very clear.

here Expensive though.

A lot cheaper

www.sogifted.co.uk/writestart-whiteboard-p-472.html

That looks good really tired.
The roller letters are good because the chn actually see the ball demonstrating the direction of the letter, so it's something a bit different. They're often used by SN teachers.

I was a bit older I think but what worked for me was to learn calligraphy. I suspect I was about 6 or 7 but I learnt by following arrows to form the letters. I was so busy trying to recreate the pretty forms of the letters I barely noticed that I was writing letters differently to how I normally did.

Fairly quickly the ornateness of the calligraphy entered my everyday writing and for a while my schoolbooks were interesting to say the least. But it taught me good penmanship and my skills are often in demand for wedding invites!

Kits for children are available from places like The Works.

That does look good, thanks.

Dd might be a bit young for calligraphy but it's the kind of thing that she likes so it's worth looking into.

I've heard the same about hand-writing from DD's pre-school - that they're not allowed to spend too much time teaching/encouraging them to write. Oh, and they don't even call it hand-writing any more - it's 'mark-making' - wtf?!

Handwriting lessons gives printouts of dotted letters that you might use.

This site is quite good.

This is interesting,too.

But for a 3yo I would just let her do dot-to-dots and lots of drawing.
This or this sort of thing, maybe.

Same site also has pre-handwriting skills things to do.

Lola - the 'one size fits all' attitude which can be frustrating.

I think I might try those letter story sheets.

She does a lot of join the dots (can always use more of those - they do get through them quickly) but she's specifically wanting to do letters - she copies them from book covers. If they are in seraph type then she puts the little seraphs on

If I can get some of these really engaging materials hopefully I can get her to write normally before it's too late - she's not interested in copying me. It's the arrows in particular that she needs.

Just one thing, I would contact the school that she is going to go to at 5 and find out what harndwriting they use there (or ask someone who's dc goes there). Just you don't want to teach a system that your child then has to unlearn and relearn the correct way. My DDs school teaches cursive from the very start, so had I spent any particular time teaching her how to write, she would now be having to unlearn it. Better if you can fit in with the school from the start imho.

I was thinking of that tackle - but just didn't want to come across as an annoying parent!

I don't think you would come accross an annoying parent asking a school how they teach writing. Its not completely cut in stone where a three year old will go to school at five.

Asking how a school teaches reading, writing or maths is a quite a reasonable question for a prospective parent to ask. For example I was keen to pick a primary school that used pure synthetic phonics as their method of teaching children to read. Some schools teach joined up writing from reception and other schools wait until year 2. There are good arguements for both approaches and some parents might have an opinon on what is best.

I would not have wanted to send my son to a school where he would be damaged by whole word/ look say teaching at the age of five. Just because I was thinking about these things when he was two or three years old, didn't mean that I was planning to hot house him at that age.

We are due to go and visit dd's school so I think I will ask about both reading and writing then. There is only one school in the village here and I expect that's where she will be going. It has a very good report and reputation though.