Stella Wrote Pretty Well!

We finally had a finger-painting session on Wednesday. Stella had a ball. She helped to get the activity started and then helped again to clean up her table. I suggested finger-painting because I wanted to see if Stella could write the letters in the alphabet properly. I needed to take note of which ones she knows and to observe the correct order of each letter’s formation.

I did gather information from this activity. I learned that Stella knew more or less all of the letters in the alphabet already. She knew them by name and by the sound. She made a few mistakes when she wrote them with her fingers. I tried to engage her by asking her to write a few of the letters at first. Letters from her name were chosen first. After that, I suggested to her a challenge to see how many letters she could write. She slowly chanted the alphabet as she went about writing them. She did make a few minor mistakes that I expected. For instance, she got ‘b’ and ‘d’ confused. She also preferred to show me her upper case letters and took a tad longer when writing the lower case letters. (Stella can be very fussy with the turnout of her writing and drawing.) When she encountered something a little less familiar, she tried to correct the error. For instance, when asked to write the letter represented by the sound /p/, she wrote ‘b’ first and then erased it with her palm to write ‘p’.

I knew Stella was able to write some letters of the alphabet for a while. I have seen her name scribbled on almost all of her artwork. Other letters had also appeared in some artwork as well. I was also aware that her mum had been preparing her during their spare time. Stella was also able to write simple words. She pointed to my cup and wrote the word for it. I did wonder if she knew that word by heart but she also labelled the toy animals that she had lined up along the window sill earlier. The first animal, dog, was easy-peasy. After that she wrote, pig, dog (again), cat and fox. She struggled when she got to the chimpanzee. It was obvious that she doesn’t know the /ch/ sound. I noticed that she did try to write the letters ‘m’, ‘p’ and ‘z’ but wiped them out quickly. She also struggled with the word giraffe. She spelt it as jruff. Her mistakes with the words didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I found her effort impressive. Writing words wasn’t something I had in mind when I suggested finger-painting.

With the information I have gathered from the finger-painting activity, I am all ready to implement the alphabet sewing activity. I was intending to defer it to around late November or early December because I wasn’t sure if she knew her letters. I already have the alphabet sewing cards made but they won’t be suitable for Stella. Her mum had taught her to write in the ball and stick style. She obviously didn't know about the cursive writing style adopted by many Victorian schools. The letters on the sewing cards that I made are printed in that cursive font. This means that I will have to make another set of cards using the ball and stick style of writing to make them more appropriate for Stella. I don’t think I want to change her handwriting for my sewing activity. I am reluctant to interfere like that. I am just the nanny, remember?