Tracing Lines

 Well, I found a new book at Walgreen's that I really think will help out my youngest client! Since she is only three years old, I've been holding her hand, making sure she's holding the pencil the correct way, and desribing what we're doing as I help her write her name. 

But when I saw this dry-erase book, I realized I was moving too quickly for her. It's made for preschoolers, and the first page has different types of lines on it - curvy, zig zag, bouncy, and so on. The child is supposed to try and trace the lines to help with hand-eye coordination. I watched her as she traced the lines, and saw which ones were easy for her and which ones were more difficult. The lines with curves were easier for her to trace than the ones with 90 degree corners. She only seemed able to draw in curved lines. I realized that going straight to writing letters was way too much to expect from her. She needs to start at step one, which for us, is tracing the different lines. I'm going to have her do it several weeks in a row, and she's done it twice now. (We only meet once a week.) 

So, here's to tracing lines!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Subbing at elementary schools!

Image
 In addition to being a tutor, I'm also a substitute paraeducator for elementary schools, and I've done it eight times now! I really enjoy it! The only thing that's difficult is navigating my way around the myriad of hallways. I've been a recess overseer, a lunch room overseer, and watched the kids while they were in line waiting for the buses to arrive. But the best part is when I get to work in the classrooms! For one teacher, I got the cardboard dividers off the shelf and set one on each desk, then made sure each desk had a sheet of notebook paper and a sheet of graphing paper and a pencil. This was all before the kids arrived. I've also done timed reading with different classes, one method being to see how many words a kindergartener can read in one minute, marking the words they read wrong, and another method where the kids in 1st grade had to read a one-page story and time them to see how long it took them, marking any words they mispronounced. I've done m...
Read more

Vowel Sounds

Image
My first post for April!  The six-year-old girl I've been working with has been learning to read blends and doing so well! Bl, tr, st, ch...  But she's started to get confused about what sounds the vowels make. So I've decided to take a break from her workbook and go back over the sounds of A,E,I,O,U. I have special lined paper in a book for young writers, and I wrote the vowels across the top of a two-page spread with lines representing columns. Then I would say a word with a vowel sound in it, like "cat," for example. Then she would need to recognize which vowel sound she was hearing, and write the word under the correct letter. (A)  I used some really easy words like bat, sit, had, dog, cup, etc. but I also included some of the newer words she's been learning, like play, trip, chug, and so on. She did okay, but she really had to think about the sounds. So I'm going to be working on the vowel sounds with her over the next couple of weeks (I tutor her onc...
Read more

#34

Image
 One of the boys that I tutor is on a little league baseball team, and I was able to go to one of his games! I enjoy supporting the kids that I tutor in this way, and it shows that I care about more than just what I can teach them, but I care about them personally as well.  At the baseball game, I took a photo of the team lined up before the game started, and I can mostly see their jersey numbers. Bryson is #34. Then I thought, how can I use this in a math problem? I decided to see what numbers he can figure out to multiply to get 34. Then I thought I could do that with the other teammates' numbers as well. I'll have to do more than just what I got in the picture, but that's a start! Oh, and they only lost the game by one point. So close!
Read more