Writing skills not on par with other skills

[MistyMountain]

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[Tawlas]

I think that's really common. Kids brains work a lot faster than their fine motor skills! My son didn't really get interested in colouring, drawing etc until he was 5. He's just about done HWOT K and while I've seen a lot of improvement, he's still not all that legible and I certainly wouldn't expect a lot of written work out of him - no more than a few words. We've done a lot of things orally - spelling, explode the code, Life of Fred, etc. He'll be six in April and just in the last month or two has wanted to more writing than before. I think it's just developmental and you'll have to get creative.

 

Other thing that develop fine motor muscles are play dough and pasticine, picking up coins and putting them in piggy banks, braiding and felting fibres, finger knitting, cutting and the like. Maybe have a "handwork" kind of time with this in mind?

[Arboreal TJ]

We tried HWOT, I had the chalkboards, I have the iPad app, we used playdoh, shaving cream, dry erase.... We've done it all. My boys are now 6 and I've given up on HWOT and started teaching them cursive. Cursive is easier for them to write, less picking up the pen, we use pens they glide easier, the original problem of remembering how to form letters is still a problem.

 

FYI my boys do spelling and math orally. If I make them write they HATE spelling and math, they have mastered addition and subtraction, they have a wonderful grasp of multiplication and division but they can't form letters to save their lives :-)

 

Keep working on it and let him do his other subjects orally. We will start copywork in 1st grade, I'm a little nervous my boys won't remember how to form all their letters by next Fall :-/

[Hwin]

Ds is 4.5 and he is able to handle early kindergarten type work. He knows his letter sounds and can blend out simple words. He is learning his phonograms and knows all his the one letter ones and a few others. He is working through a kindergarten math workbook and doing fine with it. I just started working on him with writing letters and he isn't really able to form them correctly. He is also coloring really sloppy. I know he is young. I am not worried at this point but he is getting to levels where it would be helpful if he could write letters and numbers. I wanted to have him start spelling words and I think it would stick better if he was writing it rather than using tiles but maybe he just can't do that right now. He does not like getting messy so writing in shaving cream or anything messy won't work. Would getting a small chalkboard and doing wet dry try be helpful? He doesn't really draw or color. We been doing some coloring in workbooks and he makes no effort to stay in the lines.

 

One thing that was suggested to me once was to get a large ziploc bag, fill it with shaving cream/toothpaste and use that as a finger-writing medium.

 

A dry erase board on an easel might be great as well.

[boscopup]

Sounds like a normal boy to me. :D

 

My oldest was reading independently at a mid-2nd grade level and able to easily do 1st grade math when he started K as a young 5 year old. He could barely write his name. When I pulled him out of 1st grade, halfway through the year, he was reading at a 4th grade level, more than ready to move quickly through 2nd grade and 3rd grade math, but he could barely copy one sentence before his hand got fatigued. Normal, normal, normal. Now in 3rd grade, he can write a paragraph and do all of his work as written. His reading and math levels are still above his writing, but the gap is closing.

 

My middle son has better fine motor skills, but even he wasn't really ready to start working on writing letters a lot until he turned 6. Thankfully, he's an older K'er (November birthday), so we just started real writing instruction in January in earnest, and it's going well.

 

Remember that you can scribe for a child when they are young like that. Give them input appropriate to their academic ability, and expect output according to their physical (often typical for age) ability. I don't expect a 4.5 year old to be ready to write a lot, even if they can read and do math. Children can still learn to read and do math without ever writing a single thing at that stage. By time they really NEED to start writing their own, they should be developmentally ready to start writing more. In another year, you'll probably find it a bit easier.

[StartingOver]

I have a 22 year old that still can't write. But all my boys wrote well much later than my girls. I would just wait a bit, play with playdoh or other finger strengthening stuff.