maggie, I am in total agreement with you. This attitude drives me *nuts*.
I am frustrated right now with my DS5 K experience. He has done all the age appropriate preschool stuff for letter awareness. He knows his letters. But proper letter formation for speedy writing is *not* taught at our school until 1st grade.
While I am all for letting kids figure things out for themselves, to a certain extent, I don't think it is helpful in this case. Either they are too young to write, and their output should be written through a scribe, or they are not, and they should be taught the most efficient way to do it.
And this whole "do it the way you want" will *hide* problems, if there are any. His handwriting sucks? Don't worry, he'll figure it out. Three years latter: Oh, dysgraphia? Really? Maybe we could have started the OT earlier then?
Handwriting without tears for toddlers, here I come...
PS: I grew up in a school system where we were only taught cursive. It works fine. I find it way faster than printing, but that might be because I was never taught *that* skill.
Yep. You put it very well. Maybe I should look into teaching her cursive. She's shown interest and attempts to write in cursive so maybe I will try that route.
FWIW her school emphasizes self-expression through writing and journals (they're a magnet and this is their philosophy). So when they are journaling they are able to write freely without correction (according to the teacher this is when dd is getting frustrated). And there is a separate instruction time for the correct formation of the letters of the alphabet.
