Fonts can be confusing!

MamaNikki

With all of the fonts and lettering styles that are all around us every day, I've never thought about how confusing it can be for a preschooler.  We've run into this issue lately with DS, as he is trying to read everything everywhere we go.

Take something like this:

You never know what this might be.  Could be a lowercase L, could be a capital i.  Heck, it could even be the number 1!

Oh, and capital J.  Sometimes it has the line across the top, and sometimes it doesn't.  DS looks to me right before he writes ones as if to say, "Do I put the line, or not?"  I'm not exactly sure.  Do they teach you to cross the J now in elementary school?  I can't remember!

The kicker is this little letter:

I found myself in a debate with an almost three year old today, about the fact that this was indeed a g!  DS thought I was crazy.  lol.  Then he proceeded to draw a G and try to "teach" me.  "See, Mama.  THIS is a G!"

Silly me!  I had to just let it go.  Fonts are so confusing!

brightning

I've had this exact same problem a few months ago when making letter photo books for DD. There are multiple fonts just so all the letters will look "right" - which drives my inner perfectionst crazy!

I teach DD to put lines on all capital letters (J, I). We've had several discussions about how sometimes letters look different, blah blah. She also taught me how to make a proper lowercase "a" because the one in the book was different.

I still remember that my kindergarten teacher made "g"s like the font you showed and I spent so much time at home trying to make mine look like that! Oh, to have that much free time ...

MamaNikki

Ah, yes.  The lowercase "a" too.  It always looks different in type than it does when you print it.

roseroseroseroserose

Yes...and then does y have a straight line or a monkey tail like g? And lowercase q...straight line or backwards monkey tail. And don't get me started on the correct way to form numbers

kellnbri

There are different writing programs that schools use to teach handwriting.  We have always used Zaner-Bloser.  You can google it to see how the letters are formed using that program

marriedchick06

I know!!! And what's even worse is when I am testing for kindergarten registration and they have these stupid fonts on the test and it confuses the child to no end. Several of times they will say the wrong letter only because of the font.

momofolivia

Never knew this would be a problem! 

I would think Century Gothic would be the best font to learn from since it mimics the handwriting style the best.