Would WWE Level One work for a child who isn't physically writing that much yet?

[gandpsmommy]

I have been using WWE level two with dd this year and love it. Ds just turned 5 in October, so I wasn't really planning on doing a true K5 year with him this year, but I started doing phonics with him at dh's request and he has picked it up well, then I started doing math with him (at his own request) and he is thriving there as well, and so I tried out Handwriting Without Tears K with him. I was just trying it tentatively, to see how it went, because he didn't seem to have the muscle strength yet to sustain much writing. But he has become much stronger over the past few months, able to do monkey bars/rings at the playground, and able to control his small motor movements well enough to actually make handwriting doable and rewarding for him. So he is learning to write capital letters and numbers quite well right now. Hopefully by the fall we will have finished the whole book, including all the lowercase letters as well. But I still don't think he'll be ready for much writing. He is ready for narration, though. He listens in on dd's writing lessons, and he often answers the questions before dd has a chance. He has excellent listening comprehension skills. So, I want to build on that. Do you think WWE Level One workbook would be doable with a child like this in the fall? Does it require much writing?

[razorbackmama]

There are 2 levels of writing on each page. Some of the copywork sentences are quite short - 3-4 words (at first). So he just might be able to do those.

[Mallory]

He should be able to form all of the letters before he starts copywork.

 

Level one is

Day one- copywork- sentance of 5-8 words up to 12 words by the end

Day two- narration

Day three- copywork similar length

Day four- narration and copywork- after the first couple of weeks they are to be copying a similar length part of their own narration

[Aletheia Academy]

If he is academically ready to pursue WWE, go ahead and begin that. As pp said, the beginning of the book has choices of sentences for copywork, and the shorter ones are very short.

 

Alternatively, you can use a program such as Startwrite that would enable you to print worksheets to go along with WWE that he can trace until he has the coordination and stamina to write on his own.

 

Regardless, if he's not going to be able to do a lot of writing, you might want to save the $ on the workbook until the following year (Workbook Level 2) and just find your own passages to work with.