Rainbow Writing

Dear Em,
Your school has Parent Teacher Conferences twice a year. After we discuss how you're learning & growing & developing, one of my questions to your teachers is always "what can we be doing at home?" We sing ABCs, counting things, making letter sounds, & doing word problems. Those things are easy for us. We can work on those things anywhere: in the car, at the supermarket, while we brush your teeth, when we're at the park.

Writing has been a different story, mostly because it requires you to sit down. Sitting down never has been a strong suit for you. That's one of the reasons why we haven't worked on it much at home. You can write your name (& that's only because your name is short & I asked your Nonnie if she would work on it with you this past summer), & that's about it. But, in our last parent teacher conference, they told me about rainbow writing. First you write the letters (or numbers) in yellow & then encourage a child to trace over the the letters (or numbers) with different colors, giving it a rainbow effect.

I have to admit, the first time we tried it I don't think I explained it very well to you (or you're three & you weren't paying attention). I looked down to find that instead of tracing the letters, you were using different colors to make rainbow shaped rainbows. Sigh. I re-explained it, & away you went. We started with the letter A.

Sure, you used only one color & you got only 80% of the way through the A's I had written on the page before you announced that you were done & refused to participate any longer. But, it was also our first time (& like I said, sitting is not a strength of yours). So, I hope to keep at it. I'm hoping to work on a different letter each week & at the end we'll have rainbows of every letter & number.

I love you so,
Mommy

* I wrote a follow-up post about Rainbow Writing here. *