On the homeschooling front I’ve been hitting a brick wall. Encouraging Savannah to write in lower case letters was becoming a frustration for her AND for me. She only wants to use capitals. LOVES her capitals, she will tell you.
The workbook we are using asks that the assignments be printed in lower case, unless it’s the first letter in a proper name or the beginning letter of a sentence. So, 6 weeks into it, I no longer have to remind her, but she still does not want to write that way.
This week the challenge has been getting her to write them properly. I mean, up until now, I’ve just been happy to get her to write a lower case letter. Who cares that it’s the biggest letter on the entire page. Technically, it’s still a lower case letter.
But this week I began teaching her more about what those 3 lines were for on the kindergarten ruled paper. Remember that stuff? Big blue solid line at the top and bottom, with a red dotted line in between them? It’s supposed to help kids figure out what size to make the letters. SUPPOSED TO.
My explanations have sounded something like this: “The upper case letters reach from top to bottom. The lower case letters only go from the red dotted line, down.” She didn’t seem to be getting it. I tried explaining it a different way. Many times. Still giant sized small letters. I drew them myself, over and over. She’s a smart kid and I felt that by today she should be able to write at least ONE of the 26 letters correctly.
It’s at this point that this ole homeschool mom started to wonder if she was partaking in a battle. We were studying in the letter “P”. I reminded her about the lines and she continued to draw large letters. I can’t tell you how many “P’s” I drew myself, but at one point I got out a stack of paper and threatened that we were not leaving the table until she could write a lower case “p” correctly.
I was getting mad. She wasn’t even trying. So I walked away and left her to practice her “p’s”. I was making lunch when all of a sudden she calls me, excited, from the other room:
“MOM…look at this!!! I wrote my “p’s”!!! I decided the blue line was the deep end at the pool and the red line was the rope (like at Nanny’s). The lower case letters can’t swim so they can’t cross the rope!!! Only capital letters can swim, like you and daddy!”
And they were right. And so were the vowels that she added. I can’t believe all I needed was to think of a swimming pool analogy to help her. But she figured it out on her own. Thank goodness. I don’t think I could have taken another day of lower case letter explanations!
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