The 3 Rs: Writing

The Three Rs are reading, writing and arithmetic. We blog quite often about reading. I've been working on a blog post about our math program, but what about writing?! What do kindergartners and first graders do for writing? First they learn to write!

Bentley has beautiful handwriting. I think it's his artistic skill coming to the foreground. He has very good fine motor skills because he likes to draw. Last year Kara had him do the BFH Fluent Handwriting program. He started out using large plastic sheets to practice correct letter formation. Then Kara printed out paper sheets with a couple of sentences on them about him and his daily activities and he copied over the letters on the sheets. Voila! He learned to write beautifully in a semester. 

Jake has been writing on his own (with no instruction) for a number of months. Viva hasn't done a lot of writing on her own. Just recently I've started the twins on the plastic handwriting sheets from the BFH program. They do two sheets every day. When they are finished with the sheets we will print out paper sheets for them to copy. I'm curious as to how nice their handwriting will be and how long it will take. 

Handwriting is as far as we take our kindergarten writing program. We want the twins to read a few more books before we study spelling, grammar, and creative writing skills. In a way reading is our writing program!

Since Bentley is in the first grade he has been doing spelling. Kara has worked with him and he's completed two of the three levels of the All About Spelling Program. Bentley is a good speller.

For writing Kara has used two programs with Bentley this year: Winning with Writing and Writing with Ease. For grammar she has used First Language Lessons and Growing with Grammar. I'll ask her to write a little more on how those programs are working. She has learned that first graders do not like to write creatively. If we ask B to write just one sentence on a favorite topic (Legos, the Warrior books series, whatever), he cannot do it. No biggie. We'll get back to creative writing in a year or two or three. We've got plenty of time.