Recommended Resources from our Education Department – Week 10 (May 18-21)
This week we are focusing on writing!
Six Ways to Help Your Child Write:
- Encourage your child as he or she writes a message using pictures, scribbles, letters or words.
- Have your child dictate what he or she wants to say, and show your child how you slowly say the words, listening for sounds as your write them.
- Write your child’s message in a light-colored pencil or marker and have him or her trace the letters in a darker color.
- Make a line for each word your child wants to write, and then have your child write letters to represent the sounds in the words. (It’s OK if he or she only hears a sound or two in each, at first.)
- Make a line for each sound in the words your child wants to write, and then have your child write the letters to represent those sounds to the best of his or her ability. (Note that the focus is on representing each sound, not correct spelling, and that many words have fewer sounds than letters.)
- Help your child say words slowly and write down the sounds he or she hears.
Things to Talk About as You Write:
- Words are usually made of two or more letters squished together with spaces on each side. You can count the number of words in a sentence by touching each one and “jumping” your finger over the spaces.
- Individual letters are inside words. You can count the number of letters in a word, starting with the first letter and ending when you get to the space.
