Creating Custom Handwriting / Writing Journals for Young Children

Ok. If you follow here regularly you might have noticed that I'm somewhat... detail oriented. (That sounds much better than "Type A Obsessive" right?) I knew that I wanted to include formal handwriting instruction and writing in our homeschooling curriculum. I searched online for something I could just print and use, but didn't find anything just right for our needs, so I designed something myself.

First, I found Educational Fontware. For $49.95 you get the licence to use 33 handwriting font families and some specialty and decorative fonts. You can print most of the fonts with dots, outlines, arrows, rules and so on. It was a great investment. I compared all the print fonts and chose the one I liked best for teaching the children. I made a chart so I could clearly see the differences between the different fonts.

I ended up choosing Steck Vaughn. That was simply the one I liked best for a variety of reasons. Then I dove in to actually creating the pages for our writing journal.

Each day the children complete a two-page spread. On the left is a handwriting practice page and on the right there is a writing journal page. I began with uppercase letters although if I were to do it again I would have chosen lowercase first. I wanted the handwriting page to include both tracing the letter and writing the letter. I wanted them to practice it alone and in a word. I also wanted to include a visual discrimination section. I also prompt them to go back and circle their best letter to encourage self-assessment. I include pictures of things that use all the sounds that the letter can make. Here are a few examples of our handwriting pages. Later I began having the children write the entire word in the "Practice in a word" section to facilitate review. The lower half of the rules is highlighted to help them discriminate between the part of the letter that goes in the top half of the rule and the part of the letter that goes in the bottom half of the rule.

For the writing journal pages on the right-hand side of their journals I wanted them to write their name and the date. Then there is a written prompt inside a box followed by blank handwriting rules. The rules are sized to match the handwriting practice on the opposite page. They are instructed to use at least three colors in their picture to encourage them to spend some time on their picture and to add a little complexity. After they finish their picture, Ava dictates a sentence to me. I write it in pencil on the bottom of her page and then she traces over it. If Michael's sentence is short, I write it on a dry erase board and he copies it into his journal himself. If his sentence is longer and I'm worried he won't be able to fit it all, I write it in the journal in pencil and he copies over it. In the second half of the writing journal I moved from two lines to four because the children constantly needed more space than they had for their thoughts. I also plan to have Michael move to using invented spelling and writing his thoughts himself rather than using a dictation method, but we haven't started that yet.

Here are some examples of our writing journal pages. I began with very simple prompts and moved to more imaginative, open-ended prompts later.

Here are a couple of writing journal pages complete. The name and dates have been cropped out to protect the anonymity of the author-artists.

Our first handwriting/writing journal consists of a handwriting sheet for each of the uppercase letters and a few practice sheets with words at the end and the facing writing journal pages. When we finish the first book, I will make another one with the lowercase letters and new writing prompts.

So far the children love writing journal time. They enjoy working in their journals and showing off their work to anyone who will sit down and look through the journal with them. We typically spend 30-45 minutes per session working on the lesson.

Later, I'd like to expand our writing curriculum to include a weekly "storywriting" activity where I sit down at the computer and take dictation of a story created by the children. Then I'll print it out and let them illustrate the story. It will allow them to experience writing longer stories than they can currently create in their journals without being held back by their current fine motor/handwriting slowness.

Homeschooling Year One - Kindergarten / Pre-Kindergarten: Daily Schedule and Routine

When I started to think about homeschooling, I wanted to know what a typical day was like and so I asked google. Doesn't everyone ask the collective wisdom of the internet for answers to their questions these days? I was frustrated that I couldn't seem to get a satisfactory answer. I think it is because every family that homeschools finds their own routine. Each family has a blend of unique personalities and ages. The number of children differs. The ages of those children differ. The discrepancy in ages differs. The style of homeschooling differs as does geography, physical space, family obligations, extracurricular activities, and so on. And, from day to day, week to week, and season to season, schedules morph and change as well.

"Fine, fine..." I grumbled to myself. I understood all that, but I still wanted to read some examples. And so, in our homeschooling infancy, this is how the rhythm of our days has been running.

My children wake up at the crack of dawn. I used to set my alarm for the dark and wake with them, but as they grew and became more independent I abandoned that. Now we set out a simple breakfasty snack for them to serve themselves and allow them their daily phone time in the wee hours of the morning. (They play on outdated iphones repurposed for their use and filled with mostly educational content.) I come downstairs sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 am at which point the children have been on their own for about an hour. 8:00 is my self-imposed hard limit.

I spend the next 30-45 minutes feeding the children a more nutritious second round of breakfast, fixing Ava's hair, drinking some tea, etc. Our homeschooling day begins at approximately 8:30 am.

Disclaimer: These times are approximate.

8:30-8:50 am: Circle Time. Welcome song, calendar work, weather graphing, and the song, word and poem of the day...

8:50-9:00 am: PE Break. We do something active to shake out the wiggles from sitting through circle and help get ready for the next chunk of sitting we'll be doing shortly. Lately we've been getting to know our bodies. We discussed all the major muscle groups of our legs and stretched each area followed by exercises that work those muscles. Then we did a similar group of activities for the arms. Next we'll move to the core. We talked about how muscles get stronger when you use them. Other times we'll explore movement types like running, skipping, jumping, leaping, galloping, etc. We might play a quick beanbag game or have an indoor race. I plan this activity in the PE Break section of the planner.

9:00-10:30 am: Writing journals followed by RightStart Math Level A lesson. I teach these to both children together expecting slightly more of Michael and slightly less of Ava due to the one year age difference.

10:30-11:00 am: Light healthy snack break accompanied by discussion of the nutrition components of our breakfast and snack. I'm pushing nutrition right now in the hope that it will help a little with the picky eating that runs rampant in our household. I'd say it is actually helping and so we will push on...

11:00 am-12:30 pm: Now the children alternate. First Ava does All About Reading: Pre-Reading with me while Michael chooses an activity box to play with on the nearby circle. He knows he needs to play independently and quietly while I work with Ava. He'll often sneak over and listen while we sing our letter of the day song and read the letter of the day poems from the reader simply because he enjoys those parts of her lesson. Then Ava plays quietly nearby while we do Michael's All About Spelling Level One lesson and All About Reading Level 2 lesson. He has chosen to do his spelling on the computer because his spelling skills far outstrip his ability to actually write the letters.

12:30-2:00 pm: Lunch/television/free time break.

2:00 - 4:30 pm: This time varies depending on the day. Some days we have a play date with friends. Other days we'll do another lesson (arts/crafts; science; social studies; music; etc). Sometimes they simply have free choice time and play.

That is our "typical" schedule. Of course, things vary. Monday mornings we have gymnastics at 9:30 and so we do that and then shift the rest of the schedule backwards once we get home. Wednesday mornings my amazing mother takes the children to Story Hour at the library and keeps them through lunch. Then we do some lessons when I pick them up after lunch. So although we have a routine for "home days", there is a lot of variation during the week.

But, that gives you an idea of how things are structured at the moment. I'm positive it will all continue to morph and change over time.

Homeschooling Year One - Kindergarten / Pre-Kindergarten: Daily Planning and Logging

The children are at gymnastics camp this week. Three hours every morning. It is blissful. As much as I've been enjoying homeschooling I've also rather desperately missed having some quiet morning hours to myself. I'm an introvert. Quiet alone time is something of a necessity. Without it, I feel increasingly... stretched thin. And so, I'm grabbing the opportunity provided to me by gymnastics camp to share some things with you. :-)

Homeschooling, is obviously my current obsession. I believe that it will eventually fall into a routine that will return balance to my life, but that's the nature of starting something new. So expect something of a homeschooling focus to the blog for a bit.

A while back I created a homeschooling planner. Prior to beginning to actually use it I decided that I needed to switch from something bound to a mini binder. I just like binders. I reworked some of the formatting from the original version and popped it into a binder. Also, the original planner only included weekly plan sheets and I decided I really did need daily ones. I ordered the binder from Amazon because even office supply stores didn't have a mini 3-ring binder around here. I used Microsoft Publisher and created the pages from scratch. I print them out two-sided in landscape mode, trim off the extra length, and punch holes.

I have sections for record keeping (attendance and logs), the current month's daily plans, past month's plans, state standards checklists, etc. I decided that our school year would run from July to June to mimic public schools. We started homeschooling in June, so I used June as a test run for the planner. At the end of June I sat down and tweaked my lesson plan format and I'm now using a slightly modified version of the daily plan sheet and logging chart.

Here's our daily plan sheet. (This is just a screenshot of the print preview in Publisher.)

I write in the day and the date at the top. I enjoy keeping track of our total number of homeschooling days. (1 through... ?) Writing them in by hand, allows for days missed due to things like gymnastics camp, visitors from out of town, doctor's appointments, etc. without having to scratch out days and dates that I had pre-printed. Circle time, handwriting/writing, math, and our reading program are consistent. I just pick up and continue from where we left off the day before and so it was silly for me to hand write the same thing out day after day. I just went ahead and typed those up as "ongoing". The sections that are blank are the sections where our lessons vary from day to day.

All the way on the right, you'll notice a section for "minutes". That's where I write in the amount of time we spent in each area for the purposes of logging. The state of Missouri has annual requirements for homeschoolers and so this is my method of keeping track. During the day, as I refer to my planner I'll make notes about which subjects we did during that day and the amount of time we spent doing it. At the end of the day I tally up the times and transfer them to the Learning Log.

So far, this system is working well for us. It looks like a lot of work, but in practice, it is taking no more than 15 minutes a day. The sections we do daily require no time at all because they are ongoing. At the end of the day I sit down for 5-10 minutes and think about our plans for the next day. I try to rotate in other "subjects" at least once a week. I try to do something science focused, social studies focused, arts/crafts focused, and so on once a week and so I'll write those in.

The ongoing lessons do require some maintenance work. The short version is that at the end of an ongoing lesson (math, reading, spelling) I preview the next day's lesson and prepare any materials that need to be prepped right then. It takes no more than 5-10 minutes and the children take a short break while I get that done. So, at the end of the math lesson I preview the next lesson and gather any manipulatives I might need that I don't already have on hand. At the end of a reading lesson I preview the lesson for the next day. Those lessons often involve cutting something out, so I'll go ahead and do that and place the cut out words in an envelope of the binder ready to go for the next day. The children tend to get a drink, go to the bathroom, sit down at their computer for a few minutes, or play with something while I spend those 5-10 minutes prepping the next day's lesson. Then I call them back to the table for the next thing.

I have a monthly calendar at the beginning of the lesson plan section that helps me keep track of special things I need to remember. For example, in June, arts and crafts included making something for Father's Day. The monthly calendar helps me remember to include those types of events in my lesson planning. So that's planning and logging. I'll post on how we organize/store all the materials for each subject and more on the math, reading, and writing programs we're using. For now, however, this post is long enough.