Henley Learns Lowercase Letters . . . Finally

Lots of writing options

Gaining the knowledge and skill to write, especially lowercase letters, can take time and effort even though it seems as if it should just happen on its own. With all of the writing we see in life on a daily basis, it would be easy to assume that we could just assimilate it into our knowledge by sight alone. We see symbols and pictures all the time and are able to comprehend and apply that knowledge just by absorbing them visually. A picture of a man or a woman on a bathroom door, a red hand at a crosswalk, an arrow at a stoplight - why should letters be any different? Yet letters and writing hardly follow the same pattern of learning, and for Henley it definitely took a substantial amount of effort that we’d like to share with you.

Henley gave us a small gift when it came to writing. Actually it was a pretty large gift. I know I said that learning to write just by seeing examples of writing doesn’t necessarily produce a writer, but when it comes to uppercase letters, Henley had a keen sense of how to form them before we even thought about teaching her how to write. It could have been that she was processing the shapes of the letters compared to other objects, or perhaps she was watching us write letters down at times and making a connection; only she knows. On the whole, what we reinforced for capital letters was the direct movements of each component of the letters in a clear, understandable way. Any vertical lines were called “up-down” lines because her pencil started up at the top of the paper and drew straight down to the bottom of the line. Horizontal lines were called “left-right” lines because - you guessed it - her pencil started on the left side and ended on the right side of the line. We also taught diagonal lines, but only as a means to connect two “up-down” or two “left-right” lines. Because each “up-down” line had a defined up side and down side, the diagonals could connect the up side of one line to the down side of another (as in the letter “N”). Similarly, because “left-right” lines were also defined clearly, the diagonals could connect the right side of one line with the left side of another (as in the letter “Z”). It’s important to note here, we started teaching Henley the meaning of “left” and “right” as directions and sides by this point. We used “left” and “right” for knowing which side of the car we should look out the window to see the ocean or a huge truck passing by and also to know which arm or leg hole or a shirt or pair of shorts she was putting on first, or which shoe was going on which foot. Now, Henley plays piano and, when she was learning the differences between the treble and bass clefs, she was able to apply how she knows her left hand from her right hand. It’s not always foolproof - ask her to turn left to see the horse running through the field and she might automatically turn right, but she understands the concept well enough to know she needs to turn back the other way when she doesn't see the horse. Despite it not being perfect, what we’re trying to get across is that the concept of “left-right” instead of “here to there” is worth teaching because it is more accurate and helpful to the process of learning what’s being specifically conveyed in a given lesson. And sometimes, you still get lucky! Back to writing though . . . Between these three concepts, Henley had more than half of the alphabet covered and we felt it would only be a short matter of time before she picked up lowercase letters.

As we progressed all of Henley’s other subjects, we took for granted that she would advance her own writing without much instruction from us. This girl was doing math, learning chemistry, and reading a whirlwind of literature. Almost everything she read was in lowercase letters already. Surely she was observing these symbols and grasping how to write them down herself. With all of the lowercase letters she was seeing on a daily basis, she must be absorbing them through direct visual contact and be able to turn that into a tangible skill of writing them. Yet each time we would bring it up, Henley let us know quickly that writing lowercase letters was not her strong suit.

While we were somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed, we made sure to reach out to those people around us that could offer some guidance. Luckily, we knew someone with direct experience and knowledge of the type of development in writing skills that we were looking for. Our friend who is a pediatric occupational therapist, always told us that writing wasn’t something we needed to teach, but that we could give her the tools she would use to become a more proficient lowercase letter writer and writer in general. Some of these tools could be learned through exercises that would help her hand strength, dexterity, and also coordination with her fingers. We took that to heart and started to implement some different activities into Henley’s day.

The first activity was cutting with scissors. Using scissors is another skill that can be taken for granted, and the way we hold scissors and use our hand muscles to open and close the blades takes a lot of strength and coordination. We started using scissors and cutting just about everything we could find. We would find scraps of paper and first cut straight lines, then we’d cut curvy “c” shapes, then full out “s” curves. With each snip of the blades, Henley’s hands grew stronger because she did all of the cuts herself. Most kids love scissors, so give them a task that involves cutting and they’ll be more than happy to produce 100 straight line scraps out of whatever you give them. They’ll even ask for more! The cuts may not have looked great at first, but there was always progress. The first cuts that barely broke through the paper became jagged cuts that still didn’t quite make it across the page. Because we were supporting her and trying it as many times as she wanted, though, she got better at it. The jagged, unfinished cuts started to make it all the way across the page, and after some time, they started to straighten out. Soon enough, each cut looked like one of us had completed it, as Henley became pretty proficient cutting the tags out of her clothes and cutting her drawings out of full pages of paper. We’re still crossing our fingers that she skips the self-haircut stage because of how good she has become with a pair of scissors.

Another activity was using clay or something similar to improve finger dexterity and strength. We chose to work with play dough, making balls and snakes and anything else we could imagine. Using a home recipe to actually make your own play dough is an awesome way to create a sense of ownership within the activity as well - we love using coconut oil and lavender in ours. If you want to get a little sneaky, and get all the same benefits of play dough molding while also generating a ton of excitement because of what the end result means for those little bellies, you and your child can roll out some cookie dough! A lot of cookie recipes need to be mixed with spoons and whisks, and also rolled out with a rolling pin. When your dough is ready to be placed on the baking sheet, make sure that those little hands are rolling balls of deliciousness as many times as possible. Any type of cookie will do!

Yet another amazing activity we added for Henley was the use of tweezers. We used tweezers on a daily basis and tried to make it fun and enjoyable for her. We created a game using tweezers, cups, and piles of beads or shells we had gathered from a walk on the beach. Henley would help pick up the beads and shells one at a time and place them in cups, trying to sort them by colors. We progressed to picking fish bones from salmon when we were cooking dinner and even plucked an eyebrow or two (we really did this, and we really don’t recommend it!).

When we felt that Henley was mastering all of these tasks that were improving her motor skills, we started tracing - finger tracing, that is. We found letters that were made of felt and sandpaper, and even made some of our own from puffy paint, and we had Henley tracing these with her finger. The textures would really emphasize the shapes of the letters and her fingers were learning exactly how to put it all together. We weren’t strict on how she was tracing them - just that she was doing it. Sometimes she’d use her left hand or middle finger, or start tracing an H with the horizontal line instead of the sides. Despite our ingrained conventions of how to write letters in a particular order, it didn’t matter to Henley. We figured, as long as her brain was learning the shapes, it was okay. As another side note, we are now using these steps and intermediate skills for learning cursive letters.

After letter tracing, we moved to letter drawing. No, we didn’t just hand her a pen and paper and ask her to write. But she was writing out her letters so that she could see them and creating the shapes herself so that she was connected to the muscle memory. We took a bowl of fine sand and used that for drawing letters. She’d stick her pointer finger in, draw an “a”, then clear the sand and do it again. If you didn’t tell her to stop, she would cycle through about 20 times. In recent weeks on different blogs, I’ve even seen this done with birdseed! Kids love working with their hands and they love to see the fruits of their efforts, same as we all do as adults. Use anything that your child can put their fingers in that you’re not getting upset about is a win-win for child and parent.

With all of this handwork settling in, we started to put pen to paper. Well, actually, we put small, broken pieces of crayon to paper. You might be wondering why we wouldn’t use whole crayons because that would be the normal choice for any adult. Gripping a pencil or pen is not natural for a child and using fingers to move the writing utensil is a lot more difficult than moving a wrist. When you hand a child a full pen or pencil, they will instinctively try to control the movement completely with their wrists because that muscle is stronger than any of the muscles in his or her hand. The trouble though is that the wrist won’t be able to control fine movements of the pen the way the fingers and hand will once they are strong enough. Small crayons, because there isn’t much to grip with the wrist, are a great tool to use to develop a more evolved writing grasp. We also like using crayons because it feels more fun and less formal. It’s not as serious, and we can be more creative with colors. Do you remember loving colored get pens as much as we do?

Once Henley was writing her lowercase letters well enough, and seemed like she would use them easily enough when asked, we moved to lined paper. Before we introduced the lined paper, her letters, despite being shaped correctly as individual letters, were all sorts of shapes and sizes when compared to each other, and they would end up all over the page. It was baffling to see Henley be such a super messy lowercase letter writer without any boundaries to size her letters proportionally, when she was such a neat uppercase letter writer regardless of lined paper or not. It’s also easy to forget how easy uppercase letters are. They’re all big. They’re all the same size - they all start and end on the same two lines. Lower case letters are wonky. They’re tall, they’re small, they’re short, they’re hanging low, and sometimes they get little extra dot on top. They don’t follow any real rules from letter to letter, which is why traditionally lined paper is avoided when teaching them. Yet, with the progression we went through, lined paper was the logical next step and proved to be a great asset because of all the foundational work that had already been done. Once we get to this stage of learning lowercase letters, Henley was using lined paper so that she could get a sense of what tall and small meant in relation to each other, and so that she would have a sense of the direction that letters face. But we also wouldn’t correct a “b”, say, if she didn’t make the line go high enough or the bump in front was too small or too big. If she got the shape, it was a success, and she would be able to practice the finer points more and more with a positive connection to them. Now we have a little girl who can write ALL of her letters, upper and lower case!

Lots of erasing