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Phryne

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  1. Her handwriting is average. She rests her pencil on the ring finger rather than the middle finger, which I searched hard to find someone (ended up being Handwriting Without Tears) to say was okay/normal, but then, I came to understand that she still shouldn't be gripping the pencil so far down onto the shaved part of the wood, slanting towards the lead. As for expecting too much, there is always that end of the range of opinion in any parenting question. There are those who say the kid seems behind, and those who say it's fine, s/he's "only [whatever age the kid is]", etc. I appreciate your being a bookend on the other side, since a couple of people thought she sounded so behind she needed evaluation and, potentially, therapy. My own thought is that every child has strengths and weaknesses, and it is normal for parents to struggle deciding which areas to work on and which to let slide.
  2. Sadly, I think you are right. Unfortunately, too, even though six and a half is quite young, she is not at all new to holding a pencil because of all of the drawing she does. When I first provided nice colored pencils for the art desk -- three or four years ago -- it didn't cross my mind to monitor her grip. Even though I've only been doing handwriting with her for a year and a half, we were already "down the road," so to speak, when we started. I get it, though. The grip isn't going to magically improve like the ability to dress herself did.
  3. I find that my 6.5 year old is steaming ahead in some areas (math, art, social skills, etc.), while completely stagnating in others. Examples of stagnant areas include table manners (which are awful) and pencil grip/handwriting. No one is perfect, and yet, it is my job to teach her. Honestly, if I had to choose one, I'd choose the pencil grip and let the school district send someone to teach table manners, but sadly, this is not possible. (This is an example of why I think it's funny when people say that homeschooling is "too hard"; it can be pretty hard, but not as hard as regular parenting.) I don't want to get too caught up in just one example, but I thought I had solved pencil grip and now, I realize, I haven't. There have been times in my parenting life when I have chosen to let things go, and they have magically worked themselves out. The pattern is usually that I decide the stress I feel trying to solve an issue is worse for me, and therefore, for our family, than letting the problem go unsolved. For example, when she was a toddler, I wanted her to learn to put her own clothes on; she thought all boring jobs, such as this one, should be for me. I gave up. When she was around four, I stopped always having time to help her, and if we were in a hurry, I found that I could call out, "Please put on pants and a shirt!" and she magically knew how. Likewise, when she was two and a half, I began a year of attempting to teach her to drink from an open cup, but she would knock it off the table at least once per day. I got so tired of cleaning up spilled drinks that I switched her back to sippy. Somehow, when she was around five, it seemed normal to start serving drinks in open cups. I didn't even give it much thought. I think it was because I bought a set of yogurt cups that I realized could make good open glasses for kids. She rarely spills now. What I have found works least well, for anything, is, unfortunately, the standard advice in 2019: model good behavior and provide gentle reminders. I never talk with my mouth full or let my sleeve or hair dip into the spaghetti sauce, and I have been providing gentle reminders not to do these things for a long time. I am very tired of providing these reminders. The choices, then, are to give up and hope magic happens (like it did with the pants), or to try a harsher approach. How do I know when it is appropriate to do one or the other? A standard I could apply to a broad range of topics would be especially helpful.
  4. If your answer is different for different ages, that would be interesting to hear, as well. I'm just curious. I have a six year old who is better at math than reading (phonics), so far. Would you devote more time to one than the other? If not to the exact curricula I mentioned, then to the subjects, generally? Or would you devote the same amount of time to math and reading, regardless? Sometimes, I am actually tempted to devote less time to reading and more to math because math is just a happier subject for both of us. However, doing the reverse might be more logical. I'm currently splitting the difference by devoting a roughly equal time to each.
  5. Update: My daughter's grip is the second-choice grip mentioned in HWOT! I wasn't giving her enough credit for resting the pencil somewhere (on the ring finger). I'm pretty hooked on the conventional middle-finger rest for my own writing, so it was hard to imagine her grip being comfortable and effective, but I am going to go with my daughter's, and HWOT's, thoughts on the subject for now.
  6. I appreciate all the answers. Funnily, to my daughter, writing an A from the top feels no more illogical than writing an R from the top, whereas to me, lifting a pencil three times while constructing an A is madness. She would equally like to be off the hook from any prescribed (from the top) letter construction, though she isn't unpleasant about it and is working towards a fun day trip if she can get them all right. If she makes special mention of the A's, M's, or N's, those are the ones I am going to concede first. I'm intrigued by all the possible things popular curricula writers are considering when telling kids that A's start from the top. A lot of them are plausible; I like the romance of the nibbed pen holdover hypothesis, even if the author of the hypothesis now demurs. That A should start from the top just because some others (e.g., H or K) logically should is unsatisfying, though I don't deny that it could be what curriculum makers are thinking. The transition-to-cursive argument doesn't quite do it for me because the three-lift A is very unlike a cursive A to me. Starting from the top doesn't mean that anything else about it is similar. However, I would not be surprised if someone in a HWT or Zaner-Bloser board meeting thought that starting at the top was a good idea for this reason.
  7. I am seeing that the from-the-top A is also found in the second grade "manuscript mastery" level. Zaner-Bloser then moves on to cursive.
  8. Good point. It could be a lot of worry for something that is going to change the next time we buy a workbook.
  9. P.S. We are on level B, and while we kind of stretched A out, doing a little before age five and then doing it on a non-daily basis over the course of age five, we are definitely on track to finish level B in less than a year. FYI, a child could definitely start at level B. I only saw this recommendation after we had finished most of A.
  10. Let me preface this by saying that my six year old does not have a disability. We do, however, love Right Start. Before deciding we would use Right Start exclusively, we tried a few different Singapore products and Learn Math Fast. I looked at Math U See (borrowing it from a friend for a couple of days), but only tried a very little with my daughter. I thought Right Start was better and easier for the parent than Math U See (because of the way lessons are laid out), and while Singapore and Learn Math Fast were easy for the parent, they weren't nearly as good for my daughter. What I love about Right Start is that it provides the perfect guide to really teaching and working with my child, rather than just giving her a workbook. To me, anything that is just a workbook (like most of what Singapore offers) is shortchanging my child and, even if it costs less than Right Start, actually wasting my money because all it is providing is practice sheets. I could jot down practice questions on scratch paper for free. With any program, I would occasionally skip what my daughter doesn't need, offering her the opportunity to "test out" of a section by showing me that she understands the concept. However, I don't think Right Start devotes much more time to concepts than is needed. We occasionally skip a game if I think it's superfluous. Some lessons are longer than others, so there have been days when we did two lessons a day, and other days in which we did one lesson over two days. That kind of thing doesn't bother me.
  11. I started my daughter on Zaner-Bloser handwriting at age five. Classical homeschoolers (I think, even SWB, herself) seemed to recommend it, and we needed a standardized system, because I was tired of arguing, for example, about whether H's could properly be written with five separate strokes. A year and a half later, I am glad the five-stroke H's are gone, but I feel a bit silly about forcing my daughter to start her uppercase A's, M's, N's at the top. I agree that starting at the top makes sense with some letters, but it just seems that the beginning of an A is at the bottom left. Since beginning homeschooling, I have switched to Zaner-Bloser style for most of my own letters (because apparently, I am saying it is best...), but I am a holdout on A, and to a lesser extent on M and N, also. It's not just Zaner-Bloser, either. I thought HWT, promising to be tearless, might allow what I call normal A's, but a HWT A is just like a Zaner-Bloser A. What is wrong with starting A at...well, the start of the A?
  12. I think I would pull him from social media, but not necessarily from public school. I would be looking to maximize his academic progress, opportunities, and achievement, if what he is currently being offered is "just okay." It's kind of a shame that the teen years are exactly when kids sometimes want to leave homeschooling for social reasons, but also when it's time to start focusing more on an academic path to college.
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