Using capital letters instead of lowercase

[Rachel]

My 5.5 year old is in kindergarten, we are using Getty-Dubay Italics for handwriting.  He has completed all the lowercase letters and is mostly through the uppercase letters.  I also have him copy a short sentence a couple times a week.  He has no problem writing lowercase letters while we are doing a lesson.  However, when he writes on his own, he uses a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters although it is mostly uppercase, especially in his name.  He is not consistent in which letters are lowercase, he may write a g once then next time a G.

 

Is this something a child typically outgrows kind of like b & d reversals?  When I happen to notice, I will gently correct him, reminding him that capital letters are for the beginning of sentences and for names.  Should I be watching him more carefully to avoid further cementing bad habits?

 

My 3 year old is just starting to write letters, should I work with her from the beginning to make sure she writes them correctly?

[Ellie]

He will not outgrow it. Yes, you should be watching him more carefully (whatever that might mean to you, lol) and making the corrections, in everything he writes for Official School Stuff (but not when he's writing on his own).

 

Yes, you should definitely work with your 3yo from the beginning. Don't even teach uppercase letters unless she really needs to know, as in writing her name, and always with the rule.

[Rachel]

Thanks, I always correct him when we are doing official schoolwork.  It's the writing on his own I've only been correcting when I notice. 

 

My 3 year old has shown no interest in writing until I started working with her brother.  Now she wants to do penmanship whenever he does.  So far she is only writing 4 letters, none of which are in her name, and all of them are lowercase.

[boscopup]

Mine have all preferred capital letters, even though two were taught to write with lowercase. It's just easier to do capitals for them. My oldest's private school didn't worry about it in K and just suddenly enforced it in first grade. I basically did the same thing with my current first grader, starting with his name last year in K (part of his issue was that the first two letters of his name are the same, so he's do a capital and want to do another one). I didn't have him doing copywork in K though. During handwriting practice and copywork, we did/do lowercase. What he does when writing on his own, I don't worry about.

 

My 4 year old does a mix. He'll start out lowercase, then switches to uppercase when he gets tired. He's not doing copywork yet though.

[bakpak]

My DD4 has suddenly started doing only capitals as well. I haven't been enforcing anything, as I think it's something she'll outgrow, but in some ways I think she's just being contrary (lots of that lately) and a touch perfectionistic, as she knows she messes up her lowercase sometimes. Of course, we're not doing schoolwork, so it's all her own choice at the moment.

 

 

[midori]

For learning to read with my now-4-year-old, it was recommended to start with words in all caps. Words that are written in lowercase have distinctive shapes to them in their patterns of ascenders and descenders that help them guess what the word might be, whereas words in all caps are much more uniform in shape. ("jug" versus "JUG", "happy" versus "HAPPY", etc.) So it followed that when we started learning to write, we primarily focused on starting with the capital letters as well.

 

Remember that they're having to learn how to write 52 different shapes. As long as you're up-front about the fact that there are rules that are coming into play in the future, and that it's okay to ignore them for right now while she works on mechanics like stroke order, straight lines, counterclockwise circles, how-to-hold-a-pencil, etc, I wouldn't have a problem in letting a young learner like your three-year-old gravitate to whichever alphabet is easier for her to write for starters. For your 5.5-year-old, I think you're doing the right thing. When you ask him the reason for his inconsistency, what is his explanation?

[Rachel]

Well, he says he does it that way because he likes to. I did discover that he thinks names are supposed to be all capitals because I said capital letters were for names.  I thought I was clear that only the beginning of names are capital, but who knows, sometimes he hears what he wants to hear.  I'm not overly concerned, just curious.

 

My 3 year old doesn't seem to have the dexterity to write letters yet, but we may start some tracing in cornmeal or something.

[SilverMoon]

The reminders you're already doing sound perfect to me. My kids have all started that way. My 5yo prefers capitals with the random lowercase when left to her own devices, but knows she has to write the correct case for actual seatwork. The older four kids each did something similar. For all of them, when I knew they were capable and ready, I simply put my foot down and said only the correct way of writing is done now. (This mostly occurred in first grade.) I gave them warnings that it was coming, and enforced it with an eraser in hand. They weren't terribly happy with it, but they complied. After awhile they really started caring about non-assigned writing being done right too.