Our Dilemma
Like most parents, when our son showed an interest in reading and writing, we purchased an alphabet poster and encouraged him to learn the letters and use them when writing words. However, when he got to primary school we discovered that the way we had taught him to write letters was not the same way they teach in Victorian schools and he has to learn to write many of the letters again.
Schools in Victoria, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory use a font called Modern Cursive, which is helpful for when they move onto cursive writing, as the letters can easily be joined. When it came time for our twin girls to learn their letters I thought I’d be smart and get them an alphabet poster in the correct font. However, wherever I looked, I couldn’t find one.
Our Solution
There are some resources to download online but I wanted a ready-made, attractive poster for our wall. I turned instead to my designer husband, Joel, and asked him to design one. Three short years later, it was done! 😛
The poster is great for when kids know the alphabet and want to refer to it when writing, however, one of our girls struggled to learn the alphabet when she started school. We found that she relied on patterns too much to remember the letters i.e. she knew the alphabet song and would just count upwards from A. So instead, my husband developed flash cards to test her individually on both upper and lower case letters. After struggling for all of first term in prep, we found that with the flash cards she picked it up really quickly in the school holidays. She returned to school in term 2, ready to learn her words and start reading. Since then she’s grown in confidence and can read on her own. It’s an empowering feeling knowing you can help your child through a tricky time 🙂
