Casey the Caterpillar and the fundamentals of writing

 This week we have been exploring letter shapes with some of our new learners in Autahi. Before we start writing amazing stories, we need to make sure that we practice the fundamentals of writing and one of those is the shapes that make up letters.

We do this by using a story called 'Casey the Caterpillar'.

 

In this story Casey hatches from an egg and starts to look for food to eat. On her journey she sees lots of different things around her.

As we can see here she has come across a tall stick. From this we can talk about how some letters have a tall stick like l, h, d and b. Then we practise the how we hold our pencil and write the shape.

Learning the shapes like this assists us when we are writing a letter. For example, an l is simply a tall stick but an h is a tall stick and a tunnel. This gives us a visual and audio clue to help us make the right shapes for the letters we want to write.

This is just one of the many fundamentals we teach but and it definitely makes a difference in our writing.

So don't be surprised if you hear us talking about open mouths, cups and possum tails when we are writing.