WRITING - Wipe clean boards, letter wall and stickers

I want to bring this quick post on how writing has begun in our home over the past weeks. We have made up some materials which have become important tools in our day to day life and with very little adult input our children are beginning to write.

Our first item is our wipe clean activity boards. I made up some of these and have used an early writing skills book to make others. I started with patterns for them to follow, mazes and letters and numbers. This has progressed to the letters of their name, sight words and matching words and pictures. To make these up I used a sheet of A4 paper and some laminating sheets or old overhead projector sheets taped to the A4 paper. Then the boys use white board pens to draw, erase and re-draw and they spend 20-30 minutes at a time on this activity. 

The second activity is the number and letter wall. This was posted in our number week post but has been such a success I will share it with you again. It is simply a sheet of sticky back plastic taped to the wall where the boys can play with their foam number and letters. This has expanded to sight words which i have put on card and placed on the letter wall and the eldest has started identifying the letters in the words and making up the words himself.

The third activity is stickers. It's such a simple activity and with the right type of stickers can bring a lot of letter recognition. My boys have started recognizing the letters in their names and the eldest can make up his name from letter stickers.

So here is last nights 40 minute session:

6.02pm They start using the wipe clean boards

6.09pm Youngest (19m/o) loses focus and starts walking around with pens 

             Eldest continues his work

6.12pm Youngest comes back to the table to continue then comes and goes with my guidence. Eldest continues focused on his work.

6.20pm Eldest starts to loose interest in the activity and draw erratically!

6.22pm I end the activityand both boys run off to the letter and number wall and start placing letters on.

6.26pm both start throwing letters around so I end the activity calling them to the table to the new sticker activity.

6.42pm They finish the stickers and put the rubbish in the bin.

It was exactly 40 minutes of activities and not once did I have to discipline them or get very involved in what they were doing. My role was to provide the next step and guide the youngest when he lost interest and obviously praise them both when they showed me their work or answer questions about the letters and numbers. When my eldest is focused so well I try to guide my youngest more telling him the name of the letters and show him the letters in his name. This helps him to maintain focus and give him the input he needs to begin his literacy journey. This type of activity occurs in our house most days where for just under an hour they have writing and reading opportunities in a series of pre-prepared activities and I can honestly say it's really paying off!