Prewriting Skills

Friday I had planned on going to the library to get new books, but when we awoke to discover our coastal area was under Tsunami warnings and advisories, Papa decided to go in later since we knew people evacuating the coast and low lands would be coming into our town, using the roads that he needed to use to get to work. He also wanted to be on the safe side by watching to see what the wave surge was going to look like before starting out, since he does have to drive nearly to the coast to go to work. By doing so he had to take my car instead of taking the van pool. That meant we did not get to the library.

I have noticed through Selena’s attempts to learn to write, she disregards all the arrows showing her where to start and which direction to go in to make certain letters. I thought it would be a good day to just look at these arrows and discuss what they meant, locate the back side of the arrow, or the starting point, and which direction the arrow was telling her to move in. She did great as far as telling me which direction she was to go, but didn’t quite understand the starting point. I went on line and found a graphic with various arrows, which I printed off, then enlarged.

The first thing we identified with the top two rows was the back side of the arrow, or the starting point. When Selena was able to identify this spot easily, she was then prompted to follow the arrow.

We then just had fun with the bottom two rows, where Selena exclaimed that they just told her to go back and forth. Great observation! I plan on doing much more practice in this area, as she prepares to truly start writing. While she is able to make many letters already, some do get rather confusing for her, which is expected at her age, but I do believe fully understanding what the arrows are there for, and how they easily direct her on which way to move her pencil will make her writing experience less confusing.

Papa asked me hasn’t she learned about arrows just in our driving, and then I reminded him that in our town, just how many arrows do we have, when we don’t have one way streets, everything runs North and South, East and West. He suddenly realized that we do not really have many street signs with arrows on them, so of course this would seem like a new concept to her.