Sweet Pea is 29 months old.
From: I had a comment from Barkey’s Mommy on my Kumon Let’s Color post recommending something like this. I also saw this entry describing how to create re-usable workbooks at Teaching My Little Bookworm.
Material:
- Kumon My First Book of Tracing (or any other appropriate workbook).
- 3-Ring binder.
- Several sheet protectors.
- Non-toxic dry erase markers.
- Scrap of felt cloth (or an actual eraser).
Procedure:
- Carefully rip out several pages from the workbook.
- Put each page in a sheet protector.
- Put the sheet protectors in the 3-ring binder.
- Follow the instructions on the workbook page and show your tot how to draw on the page using the dry-erase markers.
- After allowing your tot to draw on several pages, show them how to use the felt to erase their marks.
- Re-use the new workbook until you are too bored to continue your child has gained a new skill.
Observations: The Kumon Tracing workbook is very high quality. The paper is thick and the pictures are all bright and interesting, but Sweet Pea can fly through the pages. Also, she is not even close to ready for the pages in the middle of the book yet, so I was very excited to find a way to let her re-use the pages that are an appropriate challenge for her. However, I really wish I would have done this before we had already used the the first 6 pages in the workbook. It gets more complicated rather quickly, so it would have been good to be able to do those first few pages again.
Sweet Pea loved using the dry-erase markers, but loved actually erasing them even more.
Notes from the Trenches: Sweet Pea was obsessed with the cute little pictures on each page. At first, she was a little confused about the totally arbitrary instruction to draw a line between two pictures (from paintbrush to a paint bucket, for example) and instead just wanted to scribble over the pictures. It took some persuading to get her to actually draw the lines and I never got the feeling that she knew quite why she was doing it. Luckily, we can now repeat the pages until she figures it out. 🙂
Rating: 3 Stars * (Fun, Easy, Independent)
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I’m busy doing the same thing with our Handwriting Without Tears workbook. I’m halfway through. I’m splitting it into smaller subsections so I can let each of my kids have part of it.
I agree with your comments on this book in general. I continued to scan the same pages over and over again, because the book gets pretty complex pretty quickly.
That is a great idea… especially since Little BEar and Pufferfish often want to “complete’ workbook pages that they really don’t know how to do yet. This way, I could let them complete a page in their own way, and then erase it and redo it when they’re more ready for it!
I know this is an old post but I just found your site. Frequently the dry erase markers are too slippery for kiddos to control their lines. You can do the same thing using wipe-off crayons (usually found in teacher stores) and it will provide more friction, thus more control. The glossy page protectors are best for this. Plus the extra elbow grease needed to wipe off the pages is good for fine motor development.