Saturday, October 22, 2011

Handwriting Without Tears


On Friday the staff of the Burlington Early Childhood Center participated in a workshop provided by Peggy Morris, OTR, on Handwritting Without Tears. This fun interactive workshop focused on the precursor skills young students need to have before they are able to sit at a table and begin writing. We focused on spatial concepts, body awareness, pencil grasp and finally how to begin to teach students how to form upper case letters. The first steps of teaching pre-writing skills is for students to gain body and spatial awareness, Handwriting Without Tears does this through a fun interactive character called "Mat Man." Please see the post below on exactly who "Mat Man" is and how he will be created. I have attached a parent link if you would like to learn more about Handwriting Without Tears. http://www.hwtears.com/hwt/parents.

Meet Mat Man


Mat Man is a character that will be introduced in all of the preschool classrooms. The students in the Lucky Duck class have already met him and enjoy creating him. In the next few weeks he will be introduced in all of the classrooms. I hope this video helps to introduce "Mat Man" and the reasons why we he has become part of the preschool curriculum. The goal of "Mat Man" is to teach body awareness, drawing and pre-writing skills, counting, building, socializing and sharing.