For lack of a better title, today Travis and I made Es with two easy materials (straws and string)… But it turns out they were quite tricky to master!

First we traced big E and little e, and then I presented him with 4 straws; 3 were short, and 1 was long.

At first, he added the short straws to the long one in a rather slapdash way.

He traces E this way sometimes, too, so I challenged him to look closer at the E in his tracing book. Aha! One short line comes from the top, one from the bottom, and one from the middle.

Making little e with another easy material (string) was even harder. He got frustrated figuring out how to twist it in just the right way, until I provided direction.

What material would you make an E? Please share in the comments!

Our summer letter of the day for tracing and writing was D. Travis doesn’t struggle with the upper case, but still sometimes confuses his little d with little b. Working slowly through a worksheet helped him focus on which direction the line and circle needed to go.

To think about it spatially, we then designed D in two ways. First I gave him a pencil and string; could he make an upper case D?

At first he was confused, but kept a good attitude about it!

I helped him make the loop of the D with the string. Now could he see where the pencil needed to go?

Tada!

Next we made a lower case d with our hands. He remembered cupping his hand into a c from yesterday, which worked the same for the loop, here. His other hand went straight against it, for a delightful d!

Travis is a pre-k grad, and although we intend to have lots of fun this summer, I also want him to avoid the “summer slide.” To keep him fresh, we’ll be working on the alphabet. This took me back to our journey through the alphabet when he was a toddler! But now the emphasis is different; he knows his letters and phonemes, but needs to work on the fine motor skills of tracing and writing.

After tracing the letter A, both upper and lower case, we designed one from a material that started with a – aluminum foil.

I showed Travis how to roll a sheet of foil into a coiled rope – fun!

We looked at the “a” in his workbook, and he thought hard about how to shape his foil. For the majority of it, we twisted one coil until it made a circle.

The second, shorter coil would be the line on the end. Travis has a habit of putting this line closer to the middle of the a’s bottom, but this “close reading” helped him pinpoint that it should go on the side.

Next we made an Artistic upper case A, using a favorite art medium: crayons.

I presented him with three crayons – two long and one short – and challenged him to decide which should go where.

After initially making what looked more like an H, he was quite proud when he tilted the two long crayons to make an A.

One down, 25 to go!