Lettering For Challenged Learners
When I was asked if I would like to write a guest post, I had no clue what to write about. I thought for weeks, but the day before my post came due, I woke up with the impression to write about lettering. I used the word “challenged” because I don’t think that this just applies to those with “special needs”. Every child has their strengths and weakness, whether “special needs” is present or not.
Lettering has always been challenging for our son. When we first started his homeschooling, we noticed that he was easily frustrated by sitting for a lesson or not being able to form letters correctly. He would have crying and screaming fits. It was only over the last year that our pediatrician, occupational therapist, and physical therapist have told us that our son is likely on the Autism Spectrum (Aspergers). Unfortunately, we do not have anyone locally who does the screening for this, and there are physical issues, as well, that add to his reluctance to write.
Our occupational therapist suggested putting some of his work on colored paper. She said that this sometimes helps some children’s ability to process what is in print. Colored paper is such an easy thing to add. Then, when I went “back-to-school” shopping at Target, I found something that I had never seen before. I had seen dry erase lettering boards, but I had never seen one with lettering steps in color before.
There are also boards for numbers, lower case letters, shapes, etc in the pack. Actually, when I took this to the next occupational therapy session, the therapist immediately said that she had to get one.
We have already started putting this in use and have had dramatic results. I combine this board with lettering sheets that I have printed from the internet. Since Disney is a huge part of our homeschool, I found some Disney-themed lettering sheets to print onto color paper. I also used the same colored steps as the dry erase board to make the examples on the lettering sheet.
These sheets can be found at The Mouse For Less.
My husband and I have hope that this will help send our son on the way to proper lettering, and I wanted to share this in the hopes that it would help someone else, too.
Naomi Maclaren, along with her husband of 15 years, homeschool their two children, ages 8 and 11. When Naomi is not busy homeschooling, she is usually planning another trip to a Disney park. She will soon be working as a travel agent affiliated with The Magic for Less Travel. Also, she blogs about Disney and homeschool at Homeschooling Disney Style and is on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
This may be soemthing that you want to try as well, our therapist gave to us, and we love it.
http://www.visualedgesb.com/about.html
That is such a good idea. I am blessed with three great kids. My son has a hard time with his handwriting. He is doing so well in his math and I hated seeing him struggle with math because he could not write the numbers so I could read them. He is still young, I just wanted him to be able to keep on with learning math and not be hamstrung by his lack of fine motor skills. So, I bought him some number stamps. I saw them at the store and had to have them, I wish I had see them earlier. It has improved our Math lessons so much and keeps them from becoming handwriting lessons. The ink is slightly messier than a pencil, I just do not worry about it till we are done and the soap comes out. : ) It times like these that I love to home school, because my son would really be having trouble in a public school setting, I doubt he would have the opportunity to use stamps.
My daughter was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder when she was 4 and is currently being evaluated for Asperger’s Syndrome. She is 8 years old now, and she definitely struggles with writing. She has actually taken to cursive writing recently and when I told her occupational therapist this, she mentioned it was because she cannot reverse the letters in cursive so it comes easier for her.