Natalie writing

We've just come off a long couple weeks of math homework for Natalie (long, because math is soooo hard for her...and because in the middle of it she was home with stomach flu for three days), so imagine my joy when the homework today was back to "high-frequency words".  Whoo-hoo! 

Oh, wait, you want her to practice writing those high-frequency words, not just reading them?

Reading she loves, but writing is another matter.  Imagine my joy again when she readily wrote the words! 



I can tell her aide has been working on writing a lot, that she doesn't push away the paper and pencil immediately.  Well, Natalie has worked hard too, and it's showing.  I've seen lots of classwork coming home with Natalie writing on top of highlighted writing, so I wasn't surprised when Natalie asked for the markers...I picked a nice pink one, but she said, "no, yellow one."  She wanted me to write the word and she would trace the word.  Which she did!  See the video above.  I don't know if you can imagine how laborious this has been in the past...to keep her practicing writing.  Today I even got to go mediate a dispute between Lukas and Konrad, and came back and she was still writing!  Usually the moment I leave her she stops writing...usually the moment I take my hand off her arm, she stops writing (I gently placed my hand on her arm and that helped her propioception).  I haven't been able to take video of her writing because up until today, it's always been a battle that takes two hands to get her to write.

So her new habit requires us to write and she traces...but I can see her writing soooo much more this way, that she HAS to get better at writing and have the confidence to write on her own.