Learning to recognize and write our letters is an important part of Kindergarten. For the majority of time, we do this through play.
However, every afternoon, we do our printing routine. It goes like this...
Step 1) Mrs. Lowe announces the letter for the day (e.g. Z)
Step 2) Watch a Story-Bots video
Step 3) Brainstorm all the words we can think of that start with the letter of the day. When we first started we could only list a few, now we can list lots of words!
Step 4) Watch our letter rap video.
The students LOVE rapping along with these videos and practicing writing their letters in the air.
Step 5) Practice writing our letters in the air. We use all sorts of imaginary paint including rainbow, swirl and even chocolate pudding!
Step 6) Practice printing our letters with pencils and paper. Mrs. Lowe watches every student to make sure they are forming their letters correctly. Students should start at the top and work down to the bottom (see the guide below).
Mrs. Lowe also helps students to hold their pencils with a tripod grip (using three fingers). This grip will help students to be more efficient at writing and drawing.
The video below is from the "Handwriting Without Tears" website and can be quite helpful if children are having difficulty holding writing tools correctly
(Please don't worry about pushing children too hard, this is a skill that will develop with time and experience).
We have also been creating an alphabet scrapbook, using our iPad. The book starts with Aa and goes all the way to Zz.
Each page has the letter in the middle (upper and lower-case) and pictures of things that start with that letter. We can't share the whole book on the blog because it has the students names and faces on it.
The point of the book is to help us form personal connections and associations with each other the letters and it's sound.
Our whole routine takes about 30 minutes. The students really enjoy this time and are learning more letters and letter sounds all the time!
