Play to Write-Write to Read Wednesday (week 1)

I found Mackenzie's blog last night and have decided to get involved in her "Play to Write-Write to Read" Wednesday playgroup sessions with Josh. He can write his own name most of the time, knows the phonics song and can recognise most letters so this sounded like a great next step - the lessons are really well thought out and not something I would have tried on my own.

We started today with the 'Partner Journaling' part of the week 1 challenge, where you encourage your child to talk about an activity or trip you've done together recently and help them to write sentences about the experience and then draw a picture.

Not only is this a great keepsake for the future, but shows that spoken words can be written words, helps them access short term memory, improves vocabulary and is a great all around bonding exercises.

Sadly we didn't have chance to go shopping for a journal to write in, but after my spate of printable creations i ended up making worksheets we can hole punch and add to a binder. On sheet I also made sure I had gaps for 'title' and 'date' (for my own reference) and I left room at the bottom for him to write his own name. If anyone wants to download these to use at home,the links are below :)

Download in: [BLUE] [GREEN] [PINK] [RED] [PURPLE] [ORANGE]

[Font credit: Janda Manatee Soild]

 

We choose to write about our trip to Longleat Safari park on Friday. It did make me very paranoid about my own handwriting and spelling considering my own childhood Dyslexia, but it was great to get him talking animatedly and having a proper discussion with him. We decided on what each sentence should say and I enunciated each word as I wrote it. I love the fact he choose to describe the Lions we saw as being 'quiet' and he ended up drawing a lovely picture of a green Lion laying on grass and leaves. 

I love this idea, and will be adding more sheets to the collection as he does them - he's already looking forward to writing a page about the car rally he's going to on Saturday.

Looking forward to trying the lines and mazes part of last week's task in the morning and then on to lesson 2.