Writing

I've been fascinated watching Damek and Kyan's writing progress in very different ways.  Damek has never been into writing much, never liked to color as a younger child and only writes when he has a need to, which is becoming more and more these days.  Kyan on the other hand loved to color and draw since about the age of 2, and either colors something, draws or writes everyday.

Damek and I have been having fun with the book 'Games For Writing' by Peggy Kaye.  I've checked out the book before, but Damek wasn't interested at that time.  He is this time.  My motivation is to help him get better at writing, but only if it's something he wants to do.    Even though Damek doesn't do a lot of writing and never has,  his handwriting visibly has been improving over time.

When Damek does write, he wants to know exactly how something is spelled, he has never attempted to spell words on his own until playing the games in this book.

The first game we played was writing a list of all the things we could name in the kitchen.  He got a 5 minute head start and then we both wrote for 5 minutes together.  I told him not to worry about how the words are spelled, just list as many items as he could.  We both got 1 point for every item we listed plus he got 3 points for every item he had on his list that I didn't have on mine (there were 15!), so needless to say he won.  He was really excited about this game and at the end said "I'm really getting better at writing":)

Playing the games has definitely been boosting his confidence in his writing.

We played a game yesterday where we both couldn't talk for 15 minutes, but we could write.  I wrote questions on a piece of paper and handed them to Damek to answer.  Again he really had fun with this.

Some of the questions and their answers:

What is one thing you like about winter?  SLADENG

How many cousins do you have? 8

What is your favorite video game right now?  LAGO UNAVRS

What is your favorite color?  ORENG

What is one thing you like about summer?  SWEMING

What is your favorite season?  SUMMER

What place, besides Hawaii, would you want to fly to?  iNDEA (he told me it's because of the food)

Kyan and I have been playing a different game, the idea I got from the book 'The Write Start' by Jennifer  Hallissy, where I hide a small box with an object in it, he finds it and then proceeds to write the name of the object on a piece of paper (I keep the objects to a 3 or 4 letter maximum).  It started out just writing the first letter of the name of the object, but Kyan didn't like that and wanted to write the whole word.