Wood pieces for HWOT - very useful or not so much?

[J2]

Are the wood letter pieces for HWOT really useful? I have a 4yr old son who will be doing HWOT Kindergarten level. He's already great with his letters and writes really well for his age from memory (without copying letters from another page). Then I have a 1 year old that will someday obviously learn handwriting in the future.

I have the opportunity to buy wood letter pieces and am deciding 1-if I want them at all 2-if I want just capital letters or 3-if I want lower case letters. Finances are an issue so I'm trying not to buy too much that we may not use. I will already be splitting the sets with a friend, so it will be $10 for each of us for upper case or $20 for each of us for the upper and lower set.

I think my son would have lots of fun with the wood pieces, but it won't be crucial to his learning since he is already pretty advanced with letter writing for his age. Of course it can be reused with my daughter.

[dotnetdiva]

I always tell people that if finances are tight, then don't bother. You can make your own! They have patterns to follow, so you can make your own from stiff paper or even wood.

Another thing to keep in mind, is how fast your child learns. We got the wooden shapes, but only used them a few times before capital letters were memorized.

[J2]

Ah....you are "Satori Smiles" mom aren't you?! :-) I just made Learning Room modeled after your Reading Room! You were my inspiration!

I had heard that the pattern is in the back. But there is a guy online that makes and sells upper and lower case letters so I was wondering if it might be nice to have lower case letters, even though HWOT doesn't specifically use lower case wood pieces.

You are right about how fast some children learn though. The wood pieces would just be fun for my son. He already knows how to write all his letters upper and lower by memory. He tends to prefer one way or the other for most of them, but nonetheless, he knows them. (Well, there may be a few lower case letters he struggles with writing.) He would probably have just as much fun just writing letters with blocks. And I can save those dollars or put those dollars towards some other things, like the slate board or chalkboard.

Speaking of the slate and chalk board with double lines...get both? Or just one? I already have a chalk/slate board, so maybe just get the one with the double lines already on it?

[elizawill]

if your son can write all of his letters than i wouldn't bother. we made our own with cardstock & it worked great. we only used them for a few weeks though honestly. hth.

[LauraLoo]

Originally Posted by elizawill

if your son can write all of his letters than i wouldn't bother. we made our own with cardstock & it worked great. we only used them for a few weeks though honestly. hth.

I agree -- if he's already writing letters, the wood pieces likely not going to be as useful.

About 2 minutes after I showed my ds how to make letters, (he was already writing, too) he proceeded to make some really cool robot figures with the wood pieces. I never saw him make another letter. A few years later, dd spent about 10 minutes with them and then just wanted to write on paper, our whiteboards or slate.

As far as the slate with double lines go -- I think that might be much more helpful. And if you stick with HWT through cursive, you might get a lot more use out of that. I might pick that up for dd this summer.

[Reebekah]

my 4 yr old son also already knew his letters and how to write them when we bought the program....i only bought the teacher guide and student books....no need for the wood pieces here.

[snugglebutter]

We don't use them as much as I thought we would. I think they are a better tool for letter recognition than for handwriting. They are durable if you have a toddler who also wants to participate. In fact, i think I may pull them out for my 2 year old who is letter obsessed.

We also have the slate and the Stamp and See screen. The Stamp and See screen is by far the tool we use the most. If your child likes using a magnadoodle, this would probably also be popular.