My Weekend's Workshop

Last weekend, I attended two days of Handwriting without Tears workshop. It was quite expensive to attend the workshop, but it was WORTH!

Along with four different sign language interpreters, it certainly helped me follow the instructions easily (10.5 hours of training.) I took a lot of notes and received tons of products for Pre-K to 5th graders. I can use it for both of my sons and my upcoming Pre-schooler students.

Did you know that it is important to use lots of hand-on activities before learning to cursive?

First, it is important to teach the young kids to recognize all of the Capital letters first before they move on to the lower cases. While teaching the Capital letters, you can use the Wooden Shapes, Roll dough clays, Stamp and See Screen Board and Slate board. The Slate Board is the last thing you teach before teaching your student/child on a piece of paper.

Too often, we assumed it is the best to give a large size of pencil or crayon at age 3 or 4. Wrong! The speaker said it is important to encourage them to constantly practice on using fingers appropriately. You can also pretend you are dropping straw on a floor, and have them pick them up. It is good for the gross motor.

Also so many of us have learned to write with many dash lines or dot lines while learning to cursive writing. It is very confusing for some of the students because they are not able to follow the letters or line throughly.

With the wooden, any adult can teach the prepositional phrases: under, over, around. Kids learn fast while using a lot of physical movements. I loved the idea!

Since I have learned a lot and collect a lot of products (that s why I paid awful a lot of money.) I even purchased a book: Mat Man Shapes. It teaches the children to use the shapes (can be used for drawing body, houses, Snowman, etc), rhymes, imagination, exploration and community.

The next workshop will be for Handwriting Without Tears for Special Needs. I am anxious to go for another one in the Early 2009. Even better, I can use my extra Professional Growth Hours!

Oh, I am so excited to start working with my young pre-schoolers in a few weeks from now.