There's an App for That!

The littlest Sprout has been bumped from JK to SK. Overall this is a good change for him. But there are sad aspects to it, as with all change. Socially it is a good shift. He is also ready to read, so he will continue to be challenged to stretch and grow there.

One thing that we are concerned about is his handwriting. Four year old hands are not always ready for the demands of five year old curriculum. So we have started to work on fine motor skills with him at home.

Thanks to a great PD last year, I have an arsenal of tools from Handwriting Without Tears to support him in this. so tonight we started working together. HWT is a fabulous program to develop neat, well formed handwriting in children.  It also has lots of fun activities to make the learning fun, particularly for the littlest learners.  One example is using slates to practice letters in a large size before transferring skills to the smaller scale of paper.

I ran into a little problem when we had no chalk at home for the mini slate. But fear not, there's an app for that! A lovely little app called Slate works beautifully with just fingers. Jo was thrilled and very interested in practicing if it included the iPad.