Kindergarten Moms--writing question

funchicken

Hi All, I was wondering what you all are finding to be the penmanship expectations in your kids' kindy classes. DD1's fine motor, visual motor, and motor planning skills are at about a 48 month level right now (she's almost 5.5), and writing lowercase letters as small as the teacher wants them is very difficult and frustrating for her. Are you finding that your teachers are really focused on penmanship or is ours really old school? DH is going to meet with her next week to talk about how things are going--I know DD's been expressing frustration in class. Both our OT and I have asked that the teacher be patient with this. I feel like I don't know what a kid with typical fine motor skills is capable of, so I don't know if I'm being overly defensive about this. DD is working really hard to write the letters the right way, she just has a hard time making the lowercase letters half the size of the uppercase ones. I know this is a weird question, but I just feel overwhelmed with all the writing practice that we've been having to do.

Justinlove

Short answer, the handwriting expectations (in regards to proportion) are fairly standard. Does she have an IEP?

funchicken

She didn't qualify in preschool, but we are going to request an MFE. The special education coordinator told us to wait until kindy started, so she wouldn't be evaluated against the preschool criteria.

Justinlove

Just be careful because depending on the evaluation tool, some are aged up through age 5 so the scale doesn't change until age 6.

funchicken

Short answer, the handwriting expectations (in regards to proportion) are fairly standard. Does she have an IEP?

I mean, I know that's how they are supposed to write eventually , and I think DD knows that's what she's supposed to be doing, but I don't think she has the motor control yet. I think she just needs a little more time.

funchicken

Thanks @Justinlove --DH is going to talk to DD's teacher next week to try to feel her out regarding an evaluation. We have an ADHD diagnosis now which we didn't have the first time around.

MaxandRuby

DS1 (neuro-typical, almost 5.5yr old) is in kindergarten this year. He has trouble writing letters the appropriate size but I think that is fairly typical for his age. One has to learn how to write the letters and the size of them.  His teacher isn't concerned, nor am I. We work on it at home a lot. I think they are working on it at school but since he doesn't bring home much of what he did that day it is hard to gauge. All I can do is compare his writing to that of other 5yr olds and it all seems pretty normal to me with bad penmanship and letters that are all about the same size, different widths, not always writing on the line (the bottom of the letters always hitting the line).  I will state that DS1 scored "average" on fine motor skills with his first progress report.  Given that there is a discrepancy between your child's age and ability then I would talk to the teacher about it though.  In my case, I don't feel I need to with DS1 at this time but I most certainly would with DS2 when he gets to that age in school.

funchicken

MaxandRuby said:

DS1 (neuro-typical, almost 5.5yr old) is in kindergarten this year. He has trouble writing letters the appropriate size but I think that is fairly typical for his age. One has to learn how to write the letters and the size of them.  His teacher isn't concerned, nor am I. We work on it at home a lot. I think they are working on it at school but since he doesn't bring home much of what he did that day it is hard to gauge. All I can do is compare his writing to that of other 5yr olds and it all seems pretty normal to me with bad penmanship and letters that are all about the same size, different widths, not always writing on the line (the bottom of the letters always hitting the line).  I will state that DS1 scored "average" on fine motor skills with his first progress report.  Given that there is a discrepancy between your child's age and ability then I would talk to the teacher about it though.  In my case, I don't feel I need to with DS1 at this time but I most certainly would with DS2 when he gets to that age in school.

Thanks!  We have talked to the teacher about it, and we have a meeting with her next week.  They teach D'Nealian and DD's a lefty, so I've really been trying to help her write the letters correctly.  It's like she knows what the letter is supposed to look like in her head, so she just draws something that looks like it instead of writing the letters properly, kwim?  I'm just trying to figure out where I should be focusing my energy for now.

funchicken

-auntie- said:

DS had a lot of trouble with graphomotor skills early on. His fine motor rocks, but printing was a perfect storm of disinterest meets Asperger rigid thinking. LOL, he didn't buy into the concept of lower case, so he decided midway through kindie to just not use it. His writing levitated, was random sizes and had no breaks between words. 

He did special handwriting instruction which helped a lot. He still forms his letters incorrectly, but his printing is fairly readable and has gotten smaller over the years. Relative to other boys and men about his age, it's pretty much in the middle of the pack.

I love that!  Kids are hilarious.

It's not that she's not interested.  She is very interested, and she seems keenly aware of things that make her different from her classmates (peanut allergy, left-handedness).  She wants to do what the teacher wants her to do, but she just doesn't learn the way an NT kid learns.  I mean, I am frequently blown away by the things she comes up with, but she is so so different from DD2 who is NT and has really good fine motor skills, motor planning, seems to learn through osmosis.

Thanks for the feedback everyone  

mmariamm

Have you tried one of those pencil grippers? It can be really hard for a left handed child to learn from a right handed teacher, and pencil grip makes a big impact on control/size of print.

funchicken

mmariamm said:

Have you tried one of those pencil grippers? It can be really hard for a left handed child to learn from a right handed teacher, and pencil grip makes a big impact on control/size of print.

Our OT wants to work on stabilizing DD's arm before we introduce grips. She's only been using a tripod grasp for about two months. She's doing really well with the grasp, but she tends to write with her whole arm instead of resting her forearm on the table and using more wrist motion.

DH met with her teacher, and she did say she'd been focusing on printing a lot with DD because DD has started writing sentences on her own.  It's tough because DD is decoding at about a 2nd grade level, but her fine motor and visual motor skills are equivalent to a four-year-old.  The discrepancy is a big source of frustration for DD, but I think her teacher is figuring out when she's pushing too hard.  It's a work in progress

Justinlove

I assume the OT is having her use a slant board in therapy. Is she using one in class?

funchicken

Thanks for the link, Auntie.  I'll take a look.  DD is very motivated and seems to enjoy writing (even though she gets frustrated at times), so I want to keep working on it.  She wants to be able to do everything the other kids are doing. 

@Justinlove, we've tried one in the past, but we only recently started focusing more on writing in our OT sessions--she did a lot of other fine motor work (scissors, tweezers, beading, etc) because Pre-k didn't do that much writing.  We usually spend about 1/3 of the session on vestibular work, 1/3 on motor planning and strength, and 1/3 on fine motor, so it ends up not being very much time.  I try to work with her a lot at home, so I'll ask the OT about using a slant board.

I actually think her teacher is really good, but we weren't getting much feedback from her, and we have been seeing a fair amount of anxiety at home.  I was reassured by DH's meeting with the teacher.  She seems sensitive to DD's different learning style which I really appreciate since DD doesn't have an IEP.