Teaching writing how "strict"

[Caittune]

How "strict" should I be in getting the uppercase/lower case right? My daughter is 4, but is reading and wants to learn to write words. I don't want to scare her off or make her feel like she isn't doing things right, but I'm wondering how much emphasis I should put on using the correct case of letter?

She gets bored of practicing writing letters but she still needs some work on getting them.

I'm not pushing by any stretch of the imagination. She's sitting next to me, asking me how to spell things and I just give her the spelling.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by Caittune

How "strict" should I be in getting the uppercase/lower case right? My daughter is 4, but is reading and wants to learn to write words. I don't want to scare her off or make her feel like she isn't doing things right, but I'm wondering how much emphasis I should put on using the correct case of letter?

She gets bored of practicing writing letters but she still needs some work on getting them.

I'm not pushing by any stretch of the imagination. She's sitting next to me, asking me how to spell things and I just give her the spelling.

Since she's so very young, and it's her idea to learn to write words, I'd just show her with as little fuss as possible and then let her pursue it in her own way. You could occasionally point out an error in a casual way, if that's something she'd want, but I wouldn't worry about it. It sounds as if it's something she'll be pursuing for years and will care about, so it's not as if something she does right now is going to stick in the long run. Lillian

[One_Girl]

When my dd was young I just let her explore writing and sounding things out at her own pace. She would show her how I would write a letter if she asked or seemed really interested in a particular letter, but I didn't push writing practice or conventions. Now that she is at the end of first grade we have discussed when to use capitals and punctuation and I remind her when something needs those things if she forgets. I think education for young kids should be as informal as possible so I suggest just letting her write and encouraging her efforts. My dd always does the most reading and writing in the summer time when she is away from environments where she is pushed to do these things in a particular way.

[Fillyjonk]

I don't push at all, tbh. This is one of those things I reckon just comes with time. I went to a fairly progressive school that would never ever have stifled us by insisting on a particular way of shaping letters and I write fine. I think good handwriting tends to be a product of maturing dexterity, lots of practice and a desire to communicate.

All that said, when ds wanted to improve his penmanship, I taught him a bit of calligraphy. Just the process of breaking down the letters into components helped, but it also helped him get a bit of distance from the problem. He saw that there really was no one correct way to write (he is a complete perfectionist), and it kind of confirmed for him that writing is really just one of those things, as long as you can write clearly enough to be understood without undue effort by the reader, anything over and above that is a matter of art.

[Caittune]

That makes total sense. I was just getting a bit neurotic because we had to go to a preschool parent ed thing the other night (we do parent participation preschool) and the kindergarten teacher that was our speaker was emphasizing that the kids should know how to write their names using proper capitalization. She mentioned that is how they are expected to do it in school so I was wondering if all this writing practice was setting her up for problems later on.

I personally would rather her have fun and enjoy the process of learning the words rather than needing to conform to a set method at this age.

She's asking me to teach her French now too, last spring it was reading this year it is languages apparently. I guess I'd better brush up.

[chfriend]

In our town the public kindergartens won't let you go look around, but will tell you and everyone else who is listening that the children *must* be able to write there names with proper capitalization on the first day of school. If they can't, that's what they do at school until they get it. And my kids have long, not particularly phonetic, Irish names.

No kidding.

Yippy skippy for homeschooling! Let her explore and learn.