This may be a silly question, but not to me!!

[HAPPYFACE]

Please why do you learn to write a small a as a small circle with a line down the right and a small tail. When on computers and most texts it is witten like this "a", is this a french a or something?? How do you explain to a child?? I don't remember being taught this but must have just picked it up!!
Anyway she is a confused child on satge 3 of Oxford Reading tree and all the print has been with an a as you learn to write it until one book has pratice words on back with "a" she found it very confusing!

I think it's to do with eventually learning joined up writing.

You could be right, but I if I write my name in joined up then the a is fine as you learn as a child!
I telephoned the Oxford Literacy care-line this morning and the lady didn't understand what I was talking about! She gave me their address to send the book to, after she has suggested I try to correct the mistake with a black pen!!
The book cost £2.65, I'm not going to correct it myself!!

Bump, would like more answers/ideas/ suggestions before I put book in post.

both are acceptable I explained to dd that it was still the same letter managed to link to all people are different type convo imo they need to know and recognise both

What age did you explain gothicmama? My dd is 4.9 and only just starting to read, so it seams early when she has only just began to remember words! Do they teach both types of "a" at school?
She learnt her alphabet at pre-school, so maybe they even need to start to show it then if they want them to recognise it so early.

Seams should be "seems!"

happyface I think you are making too much of this. Your 4.9 yo DD is obviously bright, another few of days and she will have it all worked out. It is just one of the anomalies of the English language that we must have all come across at some point.

It's something children come to terms with quite quickly, like recognising capitals and lower case as the same letter.

so that when she moves on to joined up writing she doesn't have to learn a whole new way of doing something

she was about 4.11 and she was asking about it, I think at school they just accept there are 2 a's one tehy learn to write and one they learn to read and leave it up to the parents. tbh I'm glad soemone else has raised this as I was really unsure about it and thought it was just us who had noticed

I think they pick up the difference quickly - you just tell them that this is another way of writing 'a' or 'g'. You find it with digits as well, because 4 is not usually handwritten as it is printed.

DS2 wants to copy the printed versions, so I just keep telling him that that's not the way you write it.