HW Does Not Know the Letters Yet

Aloha. Mary Koska here with Ohana Occupational Therapy with our how to improve handwriting course. This section is going to be all about when they don't know how to form, when you don't know how to form letters correctly, what to do about that. So when you're first teaching letter formation, I think one of the best methods out there, it was developed by an occupational therapist and it's handwriting without tears. Hwtears.com and I don't make any money on this program, but I love it and I tell people about it all the time. This is one of the first books that you get. But what I like about it is it starts out teaching some of the physical skills and the visual perceptual skills separately and then it brings them together later. So at the preschool level, it starts out with these wood pieces and you have big line and a little line. You have a big curve and a little. Sorry, big curve, little girl. And you can actually make every single letter, capital letter with these pieces. So they start out just playing with them, making whatever they want. And you're talking about big line, little line, big curve, little curve. Can you hand me the little curve? And you're just playing and then you take the pieces and you, there's like a template and you can put the pieces on top to make all the letters. And it's just really easy for them to learn the concepts. And then when you're progressing to actually trying to make the letters, you can tell them to make a big line on the smiley face side. So you're making a letter E and a little line at the top, a little line in the middle, a little line on the bottom. So now they already have the concept of these big and little strokes and whether it's a straight or curved stroke. So it's hands down, I think the best way to start teaching kids to write, they have a curriculum that goes from preschool all the way up through learning. Cursive I love works really well. I also think that when you're teaching letters, practicing letters, it's really important to teach in a multi sensory way. The more pathways that the concepts are going into the brain, the more likely it's going to stick. So I have this handout that I will, I don't know if you can really see it that I'll have in the downloads for you. And basically it's lots of different ideas on how you can practice letters with all the different senses. So just some examples for the visual sense. You can use different colors, you can write in tin Foil. You can use different colored chalk crayons. You can use flashlights to draw the letters. All kinds of things, glitter, glue, just anything to make it visually interesting, to make it tactically interesting. You can do all kinds of things. Like you can put sandpaper under the paper so that it has a different texture when you're writing on it. You can do make your own tactile letters with some glue so they can feel it. You can put sand on it to make it have a texture. You can write. Pour some salt or sugar on a tray and then draw the letters in there. You can do it in all kinds of things. You know the classic shaving cream. I love it. Kids love it. It works great. You can also use whipped cream if this isn't. If they're likely to put it in their mouth or something like that. Modeling clay making snake letters is great. You can have a model a strip of all the letters and then they make the snakes and then they put it on top. You can put anything in a tray. You can put like pudding or just anything to make it interesting. Magnet letters give it a. Add a tactile component to it because they feel that resistance. Adding an olfactory smell component to it is great. So say you have play doh. You can make your own play doh. You can use Kool Aid that's very fragrant and adds color. Mix that in. You can use smelly markers. You can. A lot of people are using essential oils, adding a scent that way or just food flavorings. Mint, vanilla scented lotions. You can put lotion down on a table and draw on that to add an auditory component. I think I always use a lot of sound effects with the kids. So I just make a lot of noises when I'm. When I'm teaching them. That seems to help. Lock it in. You can draw to the rhythm of music or write to the rhythm of music. There's a really nice program. It was actually developed more for adults recovering from strokes. It's called calorbics. And they're writing the patterns. They're doing just different patterns to the rhythm of the music. And that's pretty neat. I have written down here a musical toothbrush to paint just anything that adds some noise. Adding a gustatory component, a taste component is great. Drawing and chocolate pudding is pretty awesome. You can have make dough letters that they can. You can bake like a cookie and then eat them. Like I mentioned, the whipped cream gelatin is good. You can line up pieces of popcorn to the shapes of letters. Draw and use A frosting to draw. Anytime you add a kinesthetic component using the whole body, it's going to lock it in really well. I always say that you don't really know it unless you can do it with your eyes closed. So when handwriting is efficient, we're not looking at our hand the whole time. Just imagine like when you're taking notes, you're looking up and you're writing. You might glance down at your hand, but you're not looking at how your fingers are forming the letters. So it has to become a bit little automatic to that level. You can take a paper plate and stick a pencil in it. And then that way they can't see their hand and then see what they can do. Or they can just close their eyes and it's really fun. I have them write the whole Alphabet with their eyes closed. And they're usually surprised when they can do it. They should be able to do it. It won't be neat, but you should be able to do that. There's something called a Z vibe that has. We use it for helping with different oral things feeding. But it has different attachments. So you can attach a pencil to it and it adds a vibration component to the writing. There's also those swirly vibrating pens. Loops and other groups is a writing program that's developed based on the motor patterns of the letters. So. And it's a cursive writing program. So they have like the clock climber letters. So they climb the clock over to the letter one and then come around and down. All the ones that have loops like an E or an L. They're all. So they're. They teach based on the movement pattern. Group them together. I also like taking tape like masking tape, taping out shapes or letters and walking along the tape. You can paint with water outside Mystery writing is really good. You can write on their back or on their arm or they do it on you. And then you try to guess what the letter is. I also like air writing. So when you're teaching a letter just having them do it in the air, you can also guess if they do it really well. And you can guess each. If you each do it really well, then you can guess what each other's letters are that you made. And another thing that I really like to do is I'll give you a ride. You give me a ride and what that is. And that's to kind of teach the movement pattern. So I will give you a ride. Means that I'm holding the pencil and then they climb on Top. It's hard for me to do this with my other hand because they would be using the same hand. So they would be draping right over my hand. And then they feel how I'm making the letters. And then you give me a ride, they're holding it and my hands on top. And if I need to, then I can guide them a little bit on how to make the letter. And so that's a kinesthetic way to do it. So anytime you can engage multiple senses, you're going to make a lot more gains. It's also really helpful to have a letter just like at school, have a letter strip, have a model out where they can have a point of reference. And really, before you learn to write letters, you should be able to copy all the basic shapes. So like a plus a circle. Usually you can do a circle by the age of three, a square by the age of four, triangle by the age of five, and a diamond by the age of six. So to form letters, you really have to be able to form straight line, curved lines and angled lines. And not all names are created equal. So some of our poor kids have like a whole bunch of angled lines in their name. And it's just really hard to learn their kindergarten. But if your name was Lee L E, E would be like the easiest name in the world to learn how to write. I'm just checking to see if there's anything that I left off here. I think that's about it. Oh, I have one more thing, and I love these Draw right now books. They have. This is. See if I can if it's gonna show very much here. So there's. There's a part on how to draw. There's kind of some glare here there that's a little better where you can draw the animal. And then there's a little paragraph that talks about whatever the. There's all kinds of subject matter. And then in the back there's all kinds of interesting facts. So for the kids that need more engagement, something that's more interesting. And they're practicing, they can trace over the. Over the paragraph, or they can copy the paragraph. And it's just really great for practicing. They usually find it to be really fun. So it's called Draw Draw right now. And there's always kinds of different subjects. This one is the savannas, grasslands, mountains and desert animals. So those are my main strategies for teaching letters for letter formation. Another thing that's really helpful is that a lot of letters kind of look similar. So for example, lowercase h and N and an R and a V all have this down, up, down stroke. And so when people write really fast or sloppy, those letters can all look the same. So what I like to do is if they're having trouble with a letter like that, is just have them practice just those letters over and over in a row, making them very distinct from each other. Another trick for the most. Let's see. I think we're gonna do. Yeah, we're gonna do letter reversals in a separate one. So I'll get to that later. So that's it for this unit, and I'll see you on the next video. Aloha.