Recently, a mom shared a concern of her daughter reversing letters. Did you know that many children up to the ages of 7 or 8 share this issue? Before becoming frustrated at your child, try to identify the underlying issue. Several parents have shared their assumption of their child being lazy, intentionally trying to annoy them, or not caring. During our consultation, I asked several questions that mom hadn't yet considered. This article delves into some issues we discussed. There could be several underlying factors for kids struggling with this common issue. Once you have discovered the issue, you can change your approach to addressing it, especially if you were likely to express your frustrations negatively with your child's error.
In my house, we played games ad nauseum when my children were little. Here are a few of our favorites:
Tic Tac Toe - you don't have to always use Xs and Os, try any letters they are reversing. With younger children, use shapes, colored dots, or numbers. We even play with squiggly lines with my 2-year-old.
Letter Bingo - print your own bingo cards and let the children take turns calling the letters (with supervision if necessary).
Letter Tracing - we would practice drawing shapes, then letters, and eventually words on each others backs. It was fun, interactive, and differentiated based on the child. I could do words with my oldest, letters with my middle and shapes with my youngest child. Can you tell that I like clean activities? ;-)
Hangman - this was one of my favorite ways to practice handwriting when my kids were little. They would play multiple rounds with the winner selecting the new phrase. Before they were great spellers, we practiced in front of a bookshelf so they could check their own spelling and mom could play along.
This website Phonogram Page was the impetus for me creating NOLA Homeschoolers. Here's the quick version. I ran across this amazing website that showed children how to make letters using a clock face one Spring. I saved the link to use the following Fall. In August, I couldn't find it. I checked emails, my browser history, saved tabs, then I called every homeschooling friend I had and they all thought it sounded amazing and wanted to learn more about it. For months I thought, why isn't there a website designed to hold these gems? In November, I found the website, Phonogram Page, and created NOLA Homeschoolers that very day. Initially, this website was created to house websites and resources for homeschoolers. This was in 2010, so we were at a completely different place with online resources. ;-)
Here are a few sites for additional suggestions.
Comments