Is Draw Write Now a stand alone curriculum for a gentle start to kindergarten?

[TinyMama]

The books have peaked my daughter's interest. She enjoys the idea of drawing a picture and it might make the copy work less daunting. We've decided to ease her into schooling by doing "school" three days a week. Math, phonics and handwriting being the main core subjects. Would Draw Write Now work as a stand alone curriculum for the start of kindergarten? 

 

Or any other curriculum recommendations are helpful as well! She says coping sentences are boring and she already knows her letters. 

[HomeAgain]

It stands alone.  I briefly considered it but chose not to use it because my kid hated art and I wanted to teach D'nealian, so it would have been a very poor fit. 😄

It is still copywork, so the novelty might wear off, just like with anything else.  If you just want a gentle intro for K, though, it definitely works.  When we started doing copywork I pulled sentences and ideas from his regular work.  There are handwriting templates online for clear work samples if need be.  Having it connected made it easier for him to see handwriting as an integrated part, I think.  Sometimes it was simple, like printed labels for parts of a flower that he could paste onto his picture.  Sometimes a very short sentence.  Sometimes a small rhyme.

[mathmarm]

I suppose that it could be for a child with established pencil skills (Drawing + handwriting), but I don't advise it unless your child's already fairly good with the pencil.

The drawings require around 10 steps to complete and writing about 4 sentences (about 20ish words). If your child's not (nearly) fluent with a pencil it could wind up being too difficult to be instructive. Try it as written, but if your child struggles, back up and modify how you implement it.

I feel it's most beneficial at the PreK-1 or K-2 stages that you need to be at their elbow and (mostly) attentive while they're working/drawing/copying

If she struggles, then to use DWN as an instructive tool with a beginning Kindergartener you could try it like this: Repeat 1 drawing for the whole week: Each day guide her through how to do that weeks drawing, and guide her through copying one of the sentences until she's gotten the picture drawn as best as she possibly can, and copied all of the sentences. Then draw the picture once more and cut out all of her sentences and paste them on to the "best" picture.

When she's doing copy work, pre-teach and preview with her the correct formation of the letters that her particular sentence will need. Point out the capital at the beginning and the period at the end before she starts. Make sure that her one sentence of daily copywork is instructive and done well.

 

Once you're some months in, guide her to draw the picture and copy 2 of the sentences each day so that she's building up that stamina. By the end of her KG year she should be drawing the pictures well and copying 2 sentences with good penmanship and obeying the capital and period reliably.

For 1st grade, start with 2 sentences a day, then start doing 3 sentences a couple of times a week, then start doing 3 sentences a day and finally 4 sentences a day so that by the end of 1st grade, she should be able to draw the picture well and write all 4 sentences with good penmanship, capitalization and period as well as proofread for her own errors on those two points.

 

[Xahm]

I like mathmarm's suggestions. I'll likely be using Draw Write Now as a supplement when my Kindergarten gets bored, but he's still at the stage where I need to monitor his he makes his letters. I'm not a proponent of there being only one correct way to write each letter, but there are some very inefficient ones that I discourage.

[Clarita]

I could see it being stand alone if your child's into drawing and you are confident on the handwriting part of it (both your child and you). 

It wouldn't work for my children because one isn't gung ho about drawing (to him that's just more writing). My other one is picky about the type of handwriting she's mimicking (she prefers D'Nealian and really would prefer Calligraphy).

[wendyroo]

All of my kids have been pencil-phobic at that age, so Draw Write Now would have been torture.

For us, copywork had to be much shorter, much more personally interesting, and could not be paired with more pencil-heavy drawing.

I ended up making all my kids' copywork. Looking through my old copywork files is like taking a walk down memory lane:

"Doc helps sick toys." (from DD's Doc McStuffins phase)

Then she got into dogs and her copywork was about Bowser the Hound: "Old Man Coyote is full of tricks."

My older boys loved Plants vs. Zombies: "Boombox Zombies raise their boomboxes and play a power ballad jam which immobilizes most plants."

And later it was all about Star Wars (I pulled those sentences, and the Plants vs Zombies ones, from online wiki pages):
"A fittingly fearsome vessel for its deadly pilot, the Sith Infiltrator is the personal starship of Darth Maul, Dark Lord of the Sith."