Break Through!

With Audrey starting kindergarten in a year, I thought it would be a good time to teach her how to write letters.  Since she has successfully written her name a couple of times, I assumed teaching her to write the other letters of the alphabet would be a breeze.  I bought a workbook that I take with us to my in-law's  house when we dog-sit on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I had envisioned gloriously structured time with her where we bond over the joys of writing.  However, that has not been the case at all.  Our little lessons end with me on the brink of a meltdown and Audrey hanging her head.  She has never been fond of sitting still to color or write like her sister.  She is far too busy for that and would rather play in her dollhouse.  So, I struggle to keep her attention.  I have also learned through this process that she is a perfectionist.  She gets very frustrated when she can't make the letter look exactly like mine.  

Even though we did not have a successful lesson in letter writing yesterday, I thought I would give it another shot today.  After all, it is raining and I couldn't think of anything else to do.  So, I got out big pieces of paper (instead of the workbook) and told her she could use markers.  The combination of the two seemed to do the trick because we had a break through today.  She was a lean mean writing machine.


Here are some of the letters she wrote.  We worked on A, B, and C.

After her first attempt at an uppercase B, she ran to her room crying because it didn't look like mine.  After a long pep talk, I convinced her to give  it another try and the 2nd attempt was darn near perfect.  We did a little happy dance.  :)

Her name

A proud and more confident Audrey

So, while we had a successful lesson today, I am still open to suggestions.  What are some creative ways you have taught your children to write?