Paddy's Progress

Last week the Handwriting without Tears order came and I described over here how excited Paddy and Aidan were about its arrival, especially Paddy. He spent quite a while then tracing numbers carefully and with great concentration.

He showed no more interest in it for a few days and then the other day he pulled it out, saw where I had written his name "Paddy" on it, asked me to write our last name there too (which I did). Then he decided he wanted to learn to write the "R" which begins his last name.

It was interesting to watch him work.
















First he drew these figures. They have the rudiments of the "R" figure, but they also look a lot like the "guys" he draws when he's in a drawing mood (those usually carry swords and have eyes, though), and he noticed that. He said, "They look like PEOPLE. I want them to look like R's."

















Then he drew this one (I had told him he could write a "P" and then add the extra line). I thought it was pretty good, but he wasn't satisfied. He said, "It looks like a robot!"
















He pointed to the two "legs" coming from the body. So I showed him where the line on the "R" comes out like a triangle from the main line. He tried again:


















You see he got the slanting line at just the right place. Again, I thought he had done well. But he was still frustrated, and pointed to the squareness of the curve. I said "Oh, you want that part to look like a curve?" and he nodded.

He tried once more:


















You can see he got the curve fairly close. Anyway, he wasn't thrilled but he was satisfied enough to drop the effort and go on to the next thing.

Just the other day while I was reading Tintin (as usual) to Paddy at night I told him that he could "hear" how to spell. The reason this comes up is because about once a week I change the password on my computer upstairs and leave a hint to the answer. The last one was "Magmar" and Paddy memorized its spelling. He was wistful that the password had changed and recommended that I use a password he knew how to spell next time ;-). I showed him how you could isolate the sounds in a word and then figure out what letter it stands for (or at least make some kind of guess : )). He was fascinated by this and we tried it with several words "Mom" "Dad" "cat". He even tried to write "Mom" but got frustrated because his fine motor skills aren't there yet.

Then we went back to reading Tintin (he can read quite a few of the words in the Tintin comics but it is not phonetic reading, it is purely memorization of shapes).

I thought it was interesting how this couple of moments of explanation had more impact than the various phonics exercises we have done here and there.

While I am not really a total or radical unschooler-- see Education on an Island for where I am right now -- I do think that the vast bulk of real education is under the surface of the water, and that formal instruction at best builds on that, and is small in proportion, like the tip of the iceberg. Mary at St Athanasius Academy quotes Father George Rutler on that.

I also liked Karen E's description of her daughter Ramona's first written responses to her library reading.