Today we have:
- gone to the supermarket and bought magazines for us all (Toxic and a Star Wars magazine for the boys, New Scientist for me) and then they spent some of their pocket money on an Indiana Jones toy that was in the sale.
- made a list of all the activities we’d like to do or try in the holidays (okay, most of it is wishful thinking, but if you can’t make grand plans on the first day of the holidays, when can you?).
- practised basic handwriting skills for five minutes (Akra Jr is keen to earn his pen license next school year, but his letter formation is terrible for an 8 year old, so we’ve bought some handwriting exercise books and Li’l Bhaji is joining in too).
- watched Akra Jr learn about home keys on Dance Mat Typing.
- spent time outside with Li’l Bhaji attempting to teach him to ride his bike without stabilisers.
- only had to listen to one major squabble which I refused to referee.
I get a medal for all that, right? RIGHT?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Blue Witch // 29th Jul 2009 at 1:49 pm
I hope you’re all surviving still!
In case you’re not aware already, for a child of 8 with poor handwriting, more of the same (ie repetitive handwriting exercises that tend to be boring and what they’ve already not managed to succeed at at school – er sorry, dreadful sentence) are unlikely to be the best way to improve his fine motor skills.
Do you do activities such as dot-to-dots, mazes, sewing on binca of Aida, cutting and sticking, colouring in? All these things (and anything else that requires manual dexterity) will be much more fun, and the results will have a surprising carry over.
I would also recommend the Brain Gym exercise programme (parents and teachers books are published) for such a situation.
2 Blue Witch // 29th Jul 2009 at 1:51 pm
Icing with a piping bag/nozzle too is a good one. If you do it onto greasproof paper (maybe with a simple line design from a colouring book underneath to trace over), you can scrape it off and reuse it.
3 Pewari // 29th Jul 2009 at 5:47 pm
Thanks for the tips, BW :) We do a fair amount already. Our main problem is that he has the fine motor control now, but not when he was learning to write. So he simply didn’t know that you don’t write an a like an alpha shape (so teaching him the basic starting point of going round up and down is making a huge difference already)
At the moment he’s finding it fun – as if it were a puzzle book or other activity book. I’m not pushing it though and will do some more of your suggested activities when the novelty wears off!
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