Working on Writing

I've been coming up with activities to help Carson with his fine motor skills, particularly ones that help him learn to write. I'm not pushing anything because I'm big on wanting learning to be fun, hopefully so my kids will grow up to be life-long learners. Here are a few things Carson and I have done the past month.

Sticker Letter Tracing - I found this activity on one of my favorite blogs, http://www.icanteachmychild.com/. I highly recommend her blog for finding fun and educational activities to do with your child. Carson had a lot of fun with this activity and wanted to write his last name and Owen's name too. Ever since he has become very interested in dot-to-dot books, so I found some beginner ones for him to work on. It's so cute to watch him concentrating as he flys through the dot-to-dot books. Sometimes Jason and I make our own on the dry erase board, usually dinosaurs, so he thinks that's pretty fun too.

Playing with Shaving Cream - One slow afternoon, I decided to break out Jason's shaving cream and have some messy writing fun. Carson loved drawing pictures in the shaving cream and making a mess, as you can see. I tried getting Owen involved, but he just wanted to eat the shaving cream, so I let him put his feet in it, which he thought was pretty funny. No pictures though - it was hard enough holding a squirmy, laughing baby who was kicking shaving cream all over the place! :) Bath time soon followed this activity!

I guess my activities have been paying off. The other day, Carson was drawing with chalk on the back porch as I was finishing feeding Owen lunch. He wanted to watch a cartoon, and I told him he could, but we were going to practice writing his name first. A few minutes later, he came in and said he was done practicing, and showed me this! His name is going the opposite way, but I was pretty impressed he remembered how to write the letters and how to spell his name.