Teachers - Advice please

I know we have a few school teachers on here but if anyone else can answer my question or have any tips that would be awesome.
I want to start teaching Kobe to write but dont know how to go about it. A couple of my friends have been saying thier preschools are teaching the kids how to write and they do a letter each week. One of the wee girls can write better than my 5 year old neice already so I thought it might be something Kobe and I can do together cos he always loves looking at my neices homework and wants to write letters etc.. but whats the best way to do it. Do I just go through the alphabet letter by letter or are there specific easy letters that schools start with? I just dont want to make it harder for him when he does go to school if Ive taught him things the wrong way round and we really only want to do it for fun educational learning rather than being full on learning if that makes sense. Any ideas or tips?

Edited by my2angels

i'm not a teacher but do know at kindy they teach them to write their name first, so maybe that would be a good starting point, and a way to keep it relevant for him. not sure on the how tho, i think at kindy they get them to trace over their names on their artwork.

I won this realy cool book called Miranda's Alphabet - basically it shows how each letter is related to a picture, but a picture that mimics the way the letter looks too. So B = bottom - and there is a picture - works really well with showing the sound relation as well as what it looks like. from there I would go with the dot-to-dot approach for his name, then names of people he likes, names of things. and show him the same letter like
"oh, mummy's name has an "o", just like Kobe's names. it makes an "ooooo" sound" doesn't it?" - that kinda thing.
I could read when i was just over four and the majority of it was an interest (apparently) by me, and mum just sitting answering questions and showing me how to d stuff when i asked.

Yep I agree to start with his name cos it's relevant to him and it has meaning. The join the dots thing is fab. Just make sure when you teach him to write his name that it's not all in capitals, otherwise once he gets to school he'll have to un-learn that!

Other good things to do are using his finger to write the letter in the air, make the letters out of playdough or write them with fingerpaints or goo. Write them with water on the ground or with chalk, or in sand. With each letter, talk about the sound it makes.. "your name starts with K doesn't it Kobe... it makes a 'k' sound... like kitten" etc.

Also another good thing to start at this early stage is that he's forming letters correctly. So for b, you can say 'down and around' so he remembers which way to go. So for g, it's 'around, down and a tail' - you say it kinda slowly and sing-songy. Do this when he's making the shapes of the letters in the air with his finger too. And if he's joining the jots, you could make the one he needs to start at bigger or darker.

Maya has both a Magnadoodle and a whiteboard and she loves them, she used them a lot when she was first learning to write. The gremlins love the magnadoodle too lol, altho only for scribbling.

I must admit I'm a bit disappointed with the work that Maya has been bringing home from school, her reading books are so easy that she can recite them word for word and the writing etc. that she is doing is way more basic than what she did at preschool. I'm going to see the teacher this week about it with her book of work from preschool coz I really don't want her sitting around twiddling her thumbs while the rest of the kids catch up just coz we chose to spend a fortune on Montessori preschool.

Robyn i'm starting Andrew this as well, and my sister got him some books that are wipe off (i'll get them out tomorrow and give you the name) so they can be used over and over again. They have the letters with the dots done already so they can go over them and then wipe off to it again.

I also went to the Warehouse and got some big lined books for him to write in too.

Another vote for Magnadoodles here. Saves getting crayon on the couch

When Ashlee was spelling out her name, I mentioned to a primary school teacher that she could do it and I jokingly said to her that she'll be able to write it by the age of 2. She said just as long as you teach her to spell it in lower case because apparently it's extremely hard to break the habit if they learn the alphabet in upper case. It makes sense. Something to think about I guess. Makes me think back to my dad who always always wrote in caps, and never in lower case.