teaching 4 year old to write

[33theory]

Hello everyone,
I am a newbie to this forum so bear with me if this is a dull question.
My 4 1/2 year old twins have known their alphabet since age 2 (as does now their 2 year old brohter) I am currently teaching them phonics and am also teaching them to write. The writing i see will be a challenge to keep the sessions fresh and interesting since it seems at this age to be a difficult task to learn to write.

Any suggestions:
1. To keep interesting to my boys...
2. Best teach the art of writing.
Thank you, Bill

P.S. Because of the situation my family is in and the way God has distributed our gifts i, the father , am and will be homeschooling fulltime- so if their is any other fathers who are doing the same even part time I would love to hear from you.

[Mungo]

Hi, Bill,

Greetings from another homeschooling dad! I also have a four-year-old who is advanced in reading but still learning to write.

We've had great success with the Kumon workbooks, starting with "My First Book of Tracing," and moving on to their Uppercase and Lowercase letters books. There are Kumon books for numbers as well. The tracing book has the child making lines of various shapes that are needed to form letters. The workbooks are inexpensive ($6.95) and available at chain bookstores and online.

A few more things we've found helpful:

* Our dd uses a thick, triangular pencil - that helps her grip. You can also find triangular grips that fit over conventional pencils.
* We gave her large wooden beads (from a craft store) and a shoelace to string the beads on, to help with small-motor coordination.
* Another small-motor techinique: have the children use tweezers to pick up small objects (small beads, thin puzzle pieces). We used large tweezers that came with an insect-study kit.
* Scissor skills help with coordination. There's a Kumon workbook for that as well: "My First Book of Cutting."
* Finally, coloring books can be a good skill-builder. We're not terribly fond of them in our house, but they do help with teaching kids how to control a crayon or colored pencil ("Color inside the lines").

We've been really pleased with our dd's progress and are looking forward to her starting the Memoria Press Copybook series as her skills increase.

Best to you and yours!
-Mungo

[classical4mom]

Hi- Just another suggestion to add to Mungo's excellent ideas.
There are some free online "make your own" worksheet pages for handwriting. Here is one of them.

http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/cursive.htm

HTH,
Nanci