Kindergarten phonics question

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I started Kindergarten with my son about two months and a half months ago. He is 5 and 1/2 years old. He is learning phonics really well. The issue I am having is with the large amount of weekly handwriting. Daily, he complains about his arm hurting. I slowed down to spread the week over a week and a half just to spread out the handwriting but now I think all the other subjects, especially phonics (he is eager to read ) are at too slow of a pace. How can I keep at a weekly pace when he complains about his arm hurting from the handwriting portions? Thanks for any advice!

[sarahandrew]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

We’ve been spending some time with an OT for my son’s handwriting/fine motor skills and one thing I’ve learnt from her is that if there is poor positioning or a child has poor tone/compensating somehow it will take so much more effort and energy and result in pain. Does your son have good pencil grip? Is he able to manipulate the pencil with his wrist or is he using his whole arm? Does he have hyper flexibility in his fingers? I’m sure there are lots of other things to look for as well, I’m no expert!

[Michelle T]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

It sounds as if he needs to build muscle strength using a correct pencil grip. When a student does not hold their pencil correctly, either by squeezing too tightly or using improper fingering, as the other post indicated, pain will eventually result. When I was in the classroom I had to watch my students closely to be sure they maintained proper pencil grip. One trick we used was to have the child hold a large cotton ball or crafting Pom-Pom with their pinky and ring finger when writing to strengthen those muscles.

As to the pacing of the materials, rather than moving slow it is purposefully paced to ensure mastery. Fight the urge to move along faster because your child is doing well. They are doing well because our program is designed with review, encoding and enough practice of new skills that students do well with the materials. Should you try to push along at a faster pace and leave out some of those aspects that make the program work so well, you may find skills weren’t mastered and need to go back to fill in gaps. Trust the pace for now. If your child is itching to read more, have them read more stories from the American Language Series texts as plenty of those are not scheduled within the program. Re-reading stories within FSR are also great practice for building speed, fluency and expression!

Blessings,
Michelle T

[Mom2mthj]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

Michelle,

I think the OP said that when she slowed down the pace for the handwriting that handwriting was better, but everything else became too slow. I think she wants to know if it is possible to slow the pace for handwriting without slowing down the other components of Kindergarten. If so, how to do it. I don't think she is trying to do kindergarten faster than written.

[Anita]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

In the beginning, even if your child’s pencil grip is good, there is still a significant amount of writing in kindergarten. So I just always require less writing. We trace everything that is dotted and then I only require my children to copy about two or three additional letters on their own. I provide a starting dot for reference or I provide the letter or word itself, written in yellow highlighter for them to trace. I am sitting with them and they see me form each letter, and vice versa, so we stay on task and I am close enough to make corrections. We also have one really long first name in the bunch, so I cut that child some slack on trying to write his entire name every time, especially when he’s only yet learned to write a and m. He still does very well. My older children (who were both taught this way) have gorgeous handwriting — both cursive and manuscript — and they are wonderful writers now with no problems.

CONCLUSION: ensure pencil grip is correct; require less writing; assist with models. It won’t hurt his outcome. If anything, it will help him to complete his work and not be in pain.

[Michelle T]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

Thank you for clarifying the original post. It is never a good idea to answer a forum post when you are distracted by a conference (Circe), though part of my advice would remain the same, that of building up those muscles however you can do this over time making the curriculum work for you rather than the other way around. All our techniques or curricular paths can be made to work best for you and your family. So certainly if there are writing with tears decrease the amount of writing for a while until which time the student can do it. Sometimes we need to push a bit but sometimes we need to pul back a bit. As the parent, you will know best and obviously this is exactly what you did! Great instincts!

The writing within FSR does help to facilitate mastery of the reading and provides visual mastery needed for spelling at a later time. But when children are ready to read but not as ready to write you can continue on with the reading portion while waiting for (but, of course working towards) the writing to catch up. So don’t hold back her reading waiting for her writing to catch up.

Anita detailed the exact ideas I would give to build up writing tolerance as well.

Thanks ladies!

[[email protected]]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

We’ve been spending some time with an OT for my son’s handwriting/fine motor skills and one thing I’ve learnt from her is that if there is poor positioning or a child has poor tone/compensating somehow it will take so much more effort and energy and result in pain. Does your son have good pencil grip? Is he able to manipulate the pencil with his wrist or is he using his whole arm? Does he have hyper flexibility in his fingers? I’m sure there are lots of other things to look for as well, I’m no expert!

His pencil grip looks good to me, although he does grip quite tightly at times. He is able to manipulate the pencil with his wrist. I will have to look at the hyperflexibility of his fingers. Thanks for this!

[[email protected]]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

It sounds as if he needs to build muscle strength using a correct pencil grip. When a student does not hold their pencil correctly, either by squeezing too tightly or using improper fingering, as the other post indicated, pain will eventually result. When I was in the classroom I had to watch my students closely to be sure they maintained proper pencil grip. One trick we used was to have the child hold a large cotton ball or crafting Pom-Pom with their pinky and ring finger when writing to strengthen those muscles.

As to the pacing of the materials, rather than moving slow it is purposefully paced to ensure mastery. Fight the urge to move along faster because your child is doing well. They are doing well because our program is designed with review, encoding and enough practice of new skills that students do well with the materials. Should you try to push along at a faster pace and leave out some of those aspects that make the program work so well, you may find skills weren’t mastered and need to go back to fill in gaps. Trust the pace for now. If your child is itching to read more, have them read more stories from the American Language Series texts as plenty of those are not scheduled within the program. Re-reading stories within FSR are also great practice for building speed, fluency and expression!

Blessings,
Michelle T

Thank you for the info. I do think he holds his pencil too tightly, but the placement of his fingers is good. I like the pom pom exercise and will try that out with him. And I'll check out the American Language Series.
Thanks!

[[email protected]]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

Michelle,

I think the OP said that when she slowed down the pace for the handwriting that handwriting was better, but everything else became too slow. I think she wants to know if it is possible to slow the pace for handwriting without slowing down the other components of Kindergarten. If so, how to do it. I don't think she is trying to do kindergarten faster than written.

Yes, that is correct. I'd like to do K at pace, and he is doing well at pace except his arm gets tired from the writing portions.

[[email protected]]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

In the beginning, even if your child’s pencil grip is good, there is still a significant amount of writing in kindergarten. So I just always require less writing. We trace everything that is dotted and then I only require my children to copy about two or three additional letters on their own. I provide a starting dot for reference or I provide the letter or word itself, written in yellow highlighter for them to trace. I am sitting with them and they see me form each letter, and vice versa, so we stay on task and I am close enough to make corrections. We also have one really long first name in the bunch, so I cut that child some slack on trying to write his entire name every time, especially when he’s only yet learned to write a and m. He still does very well. My older children (who were both taught this way) have gorgeous handwriting — both cursive and manuscript — and they are wonderful writers now with no problems.

CONCLUSION: ensure pencil grip is correct; require less writing; assist with models. It won’t hurt his outcome. If anything, it will help him to complete his work and not be in pain.

Thank you so much for this advice! I am going to put this into practice for him and see how it goes. Thank you!

[[email protected]]

Re: Kindergarten phonics question

Thank you for clarifying the original post. It is never a good idea to answer a forum post when you are distracted by a conference (Circe), though part of my advice would remain the same, that of building up those muscles however you can do this over time making the curriculum work for you rather than the other way around. All our techniques or curricular paths can be made to work best for you and your family. So certainly if there are writing with tears decrease the amount of writing for a while until which time the student can do it. Sometimes we need to push a bit but sometimes we need to pul back a bit. As the parent, you will know best and obviously this is exactly what you did! Great instincts!

The writing within FSR does help to facilitate mastery of the reading and provides visual mastery needed for spelling at a later time. But when children are ready to read but not as ready to write you can continue on with the reading portion while waiting for (but, of course working towards) the writing to catch up. So don’t hold back her reading waiting for her writing to catch up.

Anita detailed the exact ideas I would give to build up writing tolerance as well.

Thanks ladies!

Great advice! Thanks so much! I love "So don’t hold back her reading waiting for her writing to catch up." That is exactly what I thought I was doing, holding back his reading to complete all the writing. He is definitely ready and willing to move at pace with phonics. I will be definitely be implementing the techniques suggested. I really appreciate the experienced know how! He is my first born so he is having to deal with all my learning curves as well 😉