Writing During Home Learning

When I think about teaching from home, the one thing that stands out in my mind is writing lessons. They were the one thing that Daniel did not like at all! They were the one thing that Eliza lost interest in when the teachers said 'you can write if you want'. They were the one thing that Alexander grew an interest in. It was the subject that brought me to tears the most (and the kids too) but also the one subject that brought the most joy and satisfaction when a writing task was complete. 

Daniel had such a poor attitude towards writing lessons. His body language would slump, he would sit with his head on his hand, he would sit there with no clue where to start. All this changed though when his teacher set a writing task with a difference. 

On his iPad he had a picture but you could only see 1 part of the puzzle. With each puzzle piece that was revealed, Daniel would have to write a sentence describing what he saw. As the puzzle pieces went away, Daniel would form more sentences. He would get excited when he thought something would be above the puzzle piece and he was right. He was curious when he couldn't see the whole picture. I think he loved it because it broke down the overwhelming task of 'write about this picture' to being 'write one sentence about what you see. Then do this 10 times to have your detailed description of the page'. It was just brilliant! I had not seen him so excited about a writing task. 

In the end he wrote about 2 pages of work! He couldn't even believe it!

He even had a few fist pumps in the air when he was proud of the description he came up with.

The next day he had to do a comparison between the Grandpa in the book that he drew a picture from and a character from another book. His enthusiasm had continued! And he did more great writing!

Meanwhile Eliza had a writing task to describe what she could see and hear in the garden. The task started with drawing a picture of her garden. I just loved seeing the detail in her picture!

Alexander's favourite part of home learning was when Daniel would be doing handwriting lessons. He would grab his scrapbook, draw lines and join in writing the letters. It was really cute to see. And Daniel was so encouraging of Alexander's handwriting too!

Eliza's handwriting lessons always started with a fine motor activity. One day I didn't like the activity very much so found an activity online where the kids made cheerio towers using their pincher grip. Of course this was a hit!

Alexander also wanted to do some writing with the big kids. I loved seeing him try, remembering certain letters that he had learnt in handwriting and be able to retell me his story!

I'm curious to see if this interest in writing continues at preschool for him.

I'm also curious to know how Daniel goes with writing tasks in the classroom. But I do think that it would be structured differently in the classroom, they would have the brainstorming on the board for him to look at and he would have guidance from his teachers so I'm sure he is fine with it. Just interesting to see him find it so hard though and I do think it's because he was just overwhelmed by the idea of needing to write so much and no clue where to start. To be honest, I get that feeling too at times.