Cati and Matteo are working on cursive with the Cursive First program.
Chiara is working in her salt box.
What's a salt box? This gives some fun tactile practice for little ones in the pre-writing stages. A lot of the time when I'm busy observing Cati and Matteo, she just draws her own things in it. Occassionally, I go over and get her to practice a few strokes, especially counter-clockwise circles.
This was Cati's work from a few weeks ago practicing beginning cursive strokes.
Here is Matteo's. This is his first time learning cursive. Cati has learned some cursive with another program, but she needs more practice. She is working through the program much more quickly than Matteo. I've been impressed with Matteo's work. He's only 5 and a half and handwriting is usually more difficult for boys.
Maria has beautiful print and cursive writing and no long follows any handwriting program. I just expect nice handwriting in her daily work. She is learning to write in Greek, which she thinks is SO much fun :) (I'm not being sarcastic.) She recently started a new vocabulary program, which requires that the Greek words be transliterated into the Greek alphabet. Maria often writes her name in Greek at the top of her school work now and she showed her brother and sisters how to write their names. What can I say? My kids could be considered a little "nerdy" - Maria also thinks declining Latin nouns is fun and Cati was telling me how easy fractions are, while Matteo voluntarily does pages of math each day! I just enjoy sitting back and watching it all!
If you're interested in looking at a listing of the other things that the children are studying, click on the "Our Fall 2010 Curriculum" links on the right side of my blog.
