My oldest is just learning how to write. She is in Kindergarten and does very well with her letters but struggles with her numbers. If I wasnt watching her I wouldnt have a clue what she is writing. My instinct is just to have her keep tracing and doing practice and that it will eventually sort it self out, but I dont want to leave her with bad habbits forming her numbers. Should I correct her formations or just let her keep going. She is very sensitive to "doing it right", even if I tell her that her best is good enough so I am almost afraid I will discourage her enthusiasm if I correct her...
I have always gone with "practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." Meaning when you practice with mistakes, you are PRACTICING THE MISTAKE. And that's how bad habits are formed. So, if she can't do the full numbers, break it down to the lowest section she CAN do. Maybe she just needs to do a page of down strokes, and one page of upstrokes. We got one of those write on-wipe off placemats for $1.00 at Target. It has all the numbers and letters plus arrows showing where to start and which direction to go. It has helped us a lot! If you're worried about crushing her enthusiasm, don't tell her she's making her numbers wrong. Instead take the lower gradient and say "OK, today we are going to practice our curves" or "today we are making loops." Once she gets good at parts of numbers you can put it all together again. Then you can praise her on what she CAN do
Correcting now will keep her from making the numbers wrong the rest of her life. You get used to doing them a certain way, and if that wa happens to be incorrect- there you go.
i like free spirits advise. even with chores we make the child d it right or they will never do the chore right.
I do not see a problem with correcting as much as how we correct. You can correct your child positively or negetively but the correction needs to be done.
It depends on the child. My son, yes -- I correct him as soon as I see him doing something wrong. His passion in life is to get done the fastest way possible. If he does something wrong and I make him erase and correct it, well see, it just took him twice as long, which is the worst possible thing to have happen!! So he is learning to do things right just so I won't catch him doing them wrong. With my daughter, she is more high-strung and jumpy about things, and also takes it personally. So with her, I do not correct her while she is doing it. I just say very sweetly, "Hon, can you change those letters that I can't read?" She is getting much better, and I don't often have to correct little mistakes like handwriting. To be honest, if making mistakes caused me to keep making them, I would have never learned how to play the piano. I agree, there is something to not making the same mistake over and over because a habit is formed. When I was learning to write, I almost never had anyone correcting the mistakes I made while I was practicing, (and they were legion, for I am left-handed. ) I just got red marks on my paper the next day. I eventually learned.
I know what you mean, my dd would start crying if I tell her she got something wrong...then next time she'd second guess herself so much that she says she doesn't remember how to write an h or an a, (which she does, she just doesn't want to get it wrong) etc. So I kind of try to remind her gently BEFORE she starts (don't forget to write from top to bottom, etc). If I mention it as she is writing or correct a mistake then it is all over and she "can't do anything right"...etc.
