Simple...But NOT!

Many of us would know what to do with the above object if handed to us, wouldn't we??

An object or shape on a clipboard, a piece of paper underneath, and a marker, would indicate that we were invited to trace the object. As you can see when you look closely at the shape afixed to the above clipboard, many a child has attempted to do just that - TRACE the jack-o-lantern, and obviously, with varying degrees of success.

I sat with some of my friends from the M-F classroom just a couple of days ago with this very tool in front of us. Hannah and August and Macy and I all sat with our clipboards and our choice of markers with the point of the marker placed carefully next to the edge. We then all tried to follow the edge of the jack-o-lantern - ALL THE WAY AROUND. OO-oo-oo! My that's tricky.

Once the tracing part is done, what next?? Well, here's an option of what can be done after the tracing, done by a friend of ours, Griffin, with a dinosaur cut-out a couple of years ago:

Any opportunity our friends can have to hold a marker, or a crayon, or a pencil is a plus. The trick sometimes is finding something interesting enough to compel our friends into wanting to do the work. Handwriting is a hard-fought for skill. And here's another idea for getting our friends to pick up a writing instrument:

The above structure was created just the other day in the M-F class by our friend, Dominic, with a few Halloween-colored Lego blocks. Instead of destroying the structure, which is hard for many of our friends (deconstructing their creations to allow others to make something of their own), we offer them the opportunity to preserve it by tracing it.

Above is Dominic's structure inside his tracing, and below

is the result!! Awesome, huh?!

This is another great and simple way to practice, practice, practice with our handwriting tools - paper and pencil (or marker or crayon).

And here is another amazing example of a traced structure by Amin from our Pre-K Class.

If you want more ideas and examples of ways to help our children learn writing skills or just want to learn more about Montessori in general, please join Mrs. Banks on Wednesday, November 2nd for our 2nd Parent Education Opportunity!