Temporary Cheerfulness about Handwriting Practice and organization strategies

We are reviewing how to form numerals this week – next week we refresh cursive lower case letters, that takes longer.   I got out our 10 sided die and the review sheet of numerals, and told M to write whichever one the die came up with.  No fussy wiggles this morning.  M asked if we could make up a code so that when we get to letters, he can use the die again.  Sure M!

I’ve been at this game long enough to know that novelty wears off, but I’m still glad that for this morning it worked, maybe it will work next week too, for a while.

One new toy for me, was that this summer, I took the advise of Kendra at Preschoolers and Peace and did organize the worksheets all at once: not exactly like she does though: I made MANY copies of the handwriting sheets, then put them in one of those envelope folders with many compartments – numerals, lowercase, multi-letter phonograms, and capital letters.  Finding what I need for each morning has been easy, and theoretically, if M or B needs to brush up on a particular letter I can find just the practice sheet really easily.

I’ve been at this game long enough to know that novelty wears off, but I’m still glad that for this morning it worked, maybe it will work next week too, for a while.

So far the big weekly binder with maps and history coloring pages from Story of the World,  filed by week, goals written in the margins, and B’s assignment cards paper clipped in place is also fun, definitely keeping the printouts of poetry from Ambleside online in the same binder means I remember to read them out loud (I need to pre- read them, some of them are, well, drippy, and my performance is definitely better when I know where they are going – but hey, this year I’m reading them, however they are coming out!)  I wish I knew what happened to the little catechism book I meant to go through – we got up to the fall of man and I lost the booklet.  I think the church library has more little copies, we’ll trudge through some more.  I have been keeping a hymnal near all the “circle time” stuff, so we’ve been working through “Be Thou My Vision,” B of course can read the words and sing, M gets phrases here are there from the first verse, K sort of hums. B stays for stretches, prayer, hymn, poetry, then goes to do independent work.  He checks in with me after snack time to show me his writing assignment, and math work.

I’ve been at this game long enough to know that novelty wears off, but I’m still glad that for this morning it worked, maybe it will work next week too, for a while.