ready for kindergarten

My giraffe is not small.
My giraffe is very, very tall.

To make learning to print the ABCs more fun, find a picture your child will enjoy looking at for the length of a five minute lesson. Using a ruler or long magazine, draw three parallel lines completely across a blank sheet of paper. The lines need to be about equal distance apart but they can be an inch or 1/2 an inch apart. Start large.

After talking about the scene in your chosen picture, ask your child to name one item in the picture and tell you the letter sound he hears at its start. In my picture, he might pick giraffe, tree, leaf, sand, sky, horns, hoof - you see how this works.

Let's imagine he picked tree. You ask for the sound at the start of tree. (letter t)

Show your child how to make a capital T or lower-case t using the lines you have already drawn on the paper. Tell him the top line and the bottom line are like his shoes. His feet fit nicely inside his shoes. Ask your child to try to help the letter T fit nicely inside the top and bottom lines.

Lower-case t has a line that crosses right on the middle line. Capital T has a line which fits on the line at the top. Your job is to help your child work on this in a stress-free way. It takes every child's fingers a very long time to get control of a pencil. Your child's fingers will get tired - almost right away. 

Backward letters are not a problem; do not spend energy forcing your child to get them right. Help your child learn to point and name and say all basic ABC letters: Aa apple, Bb bear, Cc cat, etc.

But being wobbly with b, d, g, p, q will cause problems. Spend your child's limited energy mastering the names, sounds, and shapes of b, d, g, p, q. By early 1st Grade, be sure your child recognizes those letters even when the letters are inside words. Be sure your child is clear: old not olb and by not dy. Confusion within words of b /d and p / q / g causes a child to fall behind.

BTW, if your child is left-handed, please do not try to change this natural feeling.

I use ebay as my website. Search Instant Reading Help all my books will pop up for you. Have a great day, Mary Maisner