Tracing Is Practice With Guardrails, Not BusyworkNew!!
I've heard tracing dismissed as busywork more than once, usually by well-meaning people who assume real learning only happens when a child is generating something from scratch. I understand the instinct, but it misunderstands what tracing is doing developmentally, and it undersells a useful tool. The hidden work inside a traced line Handwriting isn't one […]
What I Wish Every Parent Knew Before Kindergarten BeginsNew!!
Every August, I get the same nervous question from parents in one form or another: is my child ready? They usually mean academically — do they know their letters, can they count, can they write their name. Those things matter, but after enough first days of school, I've come to believe they're not the things […]
Left-Handed Writers Need Better Setup, Not Lower ExpectationsNew!!
About one in ten of the kids who've come through my classroom over the years have been left-handed, and I get a specific, worried version of the same question from their parents almost every time: is this going to be harder for them? The honest answer is: a little different, not harder — and the […]
Sight Words Are Not Magic. They Are Mileage.New!!
Sight word lists confuse a lot of parents, and I understand why. "The," "was," "said," "there" — these words show up on a list to memorize with no obvious pattern connecting them, and it can feel like an arbitrary exercise handed down without explanation. It isn't arbitrary. Understanding what's happening when a child practices these […]
Five Quiet Minutes Can Change a Child’s HandwritingNew!!
Parents often tell me they feel like they should be doing more — a workbook, a structured curriculum, thirty minutes at the kitchen table every night. Then that plan lasts about four days before it collapses under its own weight, and they feel like they've failed at something. I want to make the opposite case: […]
Teach the Name Before the AlphabetNew!!
Walk into almost any kindergarten classroom in the first weeks of school and you'll see the same thing on the wall: name cards, cubby labels, sign-in sheets, all built around one specific word for each child — their own name. Long before "A is for apple," a child's name is doing the real work of […]
When a Child Writes Their Name Backwards, Start HereNew!!
The first time a parent shows me a paper with a backwards "S" in their child's name, they're usually apologizing for it. They slide it across the table like evidence of something gone wrong, and they want to know what they did — or didn't do. Almost always, the answer is: nothing. This is normal. […]