Doing K work orally? Anyone?

[frugalmama]

DD {4yo} is mentally ready for K work and asking for school work, but the motor skills aren't there yet for learning to write at all. I am trying to work with her on that as well since she's actually a bit behind with motor skills {any ideas?}

Has anyone ever done K work orally? How did it work for you? Did it hurt down the road? She is quite fine with telling me which one to circle, box, etc for workbooks.

Our program {CHC} has quite a bit of writing for letters & numbers. Would it hurt if I just had her skip the writing practice? They also do handwriting starting the second semester, so I could just move the writing portion of the first semester to the second and the second semesters writing to summer {we school year-round}.

x-posting to gifted forum as well.

[kgianforti]

We did K work orally because my big girl couldn't write. We also skipped any printing practice because she wasn't interested. Then, right after I bought blank stickers so she could stick her answers in, she started writing...all on her own and out of the blue.

[elizawill]

we did almost all of my son's K work orally. he was 5 1/2 when we started kindergarten, so i did use HWT throughout his K year to introduce letters & numbers... but with your daughter only being 4, i wouldn't worry about it at all honestly. this year, we are still moving slow and steady through handwriting and do just a small amount each day. i did the same thing with my daughter & she'll be 9 soon and is in grade 3. although she was behind her peers initially in writing, she is totally caught up now (and honestly, she'll far surpass the public schools in every area by 5th grade). when your daughter is ready to write, a fun way to teach letters and numbers is to have your child write in shaving cream. my kids both learned this way & it was very fun for them. to increase her motor skills, i would suggest breaking crayons into thirds. an OT here on MDC gave me this advice for my son & it has helped him a lot. he also uses the HWT pencils (which are just very short golf-type pencils).

anyway. no worries.

[sbgrace]

The only thing my kids wrote for was handwriting. Many K curriculum choices require almost no writing. If something did I wrote for my son but we rarely had to do that. We weren't workbook based curriculum though. Occasionally our math had some writing (mostly it was manipulative based) and then I wrote for him.

[Crafty]

We did most of our K and a lot of our 1st grade stuff orally- ds struggled with fine motor skills and still does to some extent (writing is still very difficult and tiring for him, but he's getting a lot better lately. He's 8 and we're working on cursive, but he's also left-handed, so my work is REALLY cut out for me ). Maybe look into some occupational therapy and don't worry too much about it. We even used to do math orally- ds would tell me what to write, and I'd write it down for him. I wouldn't make a single mark on the paper without him telling me what to write, though, because I wanted to make sure he really had it down. He did.

[meetoo]

I wouldn't worry about the writing but i would work on motor skills. I would do something daily in this area. Some ideas:

-Monkey bars
-wheel barrel walking
-crab walking
-scissors
-coloring
-using a hole punch then gluing on the tiny pieces
-lacing beads
-clay/play duh
-Poking holes in paper with tooth picks (my kids liked to make disigns to hang on the windows like this)
-peg boards
-buttoning buttons, zipping sippers, tying shoes etc.
- building with legos
-transfer water from one dish to another by squeezing it out of a sponge

The list is really endless just look for things that work those fingers, hands, and upper body....

[onyxravnos]

yep my 3 1/2 year old is in the same boat no where near being able to write or really draw anything but mentally ready for K. we do it orally as well or i cut out the numbers/letters and we glue or otherwise do the project without actually writing.

[pampered_mom]

You could always try HWOT's Pre-K. Its multi-sensory approach might fit the bill for you. I highly suggest getting the teacher's manual and the workbook. They have other things like roll-a-dough letters, wood pieces, chalkboards, etc. We've come up with other options for those pieces with things we already had on hand and such. It's meant to help with small-motor skill development and could be taken very slowly. My 5 1/2yo and 2 1/2yo love it. I'm not specifically setting out to do with with my 2 1/2 yo, but can't get away with just doing it with one child and not the other.

I think for both the books it'd be something like $15 at RR. If I had to pick one more things to purchase specifically from them it'd be one or both of the CDs. I made our capital letter pieces out of foam that I got from JoAnns, but I can see where having them made out of wood would have been better.