Handwriting Club 9/8 and 9/10/15

 

In Handwriting Club, we stood and tossed a stuffed potato again to help me learn names and is also a good activity for eye-hand coordination.  Again, we side stepped to the right and left with scarves to help learn right and left sides of our body.  Then reviewed directional concepts: top, middle, bottom, right and left of our own bodies.  We reviewed the different lines and practiced drawing them in the air with the scarves while in tall kneeling position.  

 

Then, we did all of our 8 handwriting warm-ups and practiced more flexing and extending our wrist using Chinese Yoyo's.  The students had a lot of fun with these!

 

After our hands were warmed up, we reviewed proper grasp for crayons and practiced drawing "straight," "sleepy," "slanted" and curve lines on tri-lined dry-erase boards, while laying down on our bellies, up on elbows.  This position is good for upper body strengthing!  I encouraged students to do homework, games, and tv in this position.  We practiced drawing lines in a boundary using dry-erase crayons.  Dry-erase crayons are a better alternative than using dry-erase markers when practicing letter formation.  Like chalk, it creates resistance, which slows down the movement and gives more feedback to the brain, which improves learning.  It's also a great finger strengther when erasing!  If we had time left, we did table top yoga pose.