Monday, April 30, 2012

Integrate Fun: Cursive Writing and a Cat's Cradle

I'm always on the lookout for ways to integrate fun into our learning. Today we made learning cursive writing fun and like a piece of woven artwork. Yes, we went loopy today. {I was afraid that I'd have to say that one day--ha.} Actually, we started the foundations for writing cursive letters in a fun way. Here's how.

Have you ever made a Cat's Cradle with yarn looped between your fingers? We did. We started watching this YouTube video {Here} for how to create many creations like the Cat's Cradle, Cat's Whiskers, and the Eiffel tower.

Then we tied together that long string of yarn and moved it around on our own. As we did, we talked about an important concept. The concept is that cursive writing is like that piece of yarn. It is connected--plus we had a little bit of movement and fun too.


This technique gets those little fingers warmed up and ready to get writing. This is a simple way to teach a very practical concept. When students write in cursive, they have to learn to keep their letters connected, just like they are a piece of string or yarn.

If you've got a multicolored piece of yarn, you can explain how each different color could be a different letter on the same string.

Save that piece of yarn. We'll use it again for another cursive writing technique coming up in a future post.

Enjoy!
Robin @ Sweet Tea Classroom

6 comments:

  1. That is so clever...I'm going to have to pass this along to my teacher friends who teach cursive...

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  2. Hi, stopping by from Triple T Mum! I haven't seen this idea before. Thanks for sharing with the Kids Co-op! Have pinned this to our Kids Co-op board :)

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  3. Cat's Cradle is one of my all-time favorite games! I featured this post on my Kids' Co-Op linky party this week. You can check it out and grab a button here: -Malia {Playdough to Plato}

    http://www.playdoughtoplato.com/2012/05/11/weekly-kids-co-op-linky-party/

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  4. I forgot all about Cat's cradle - thanks for the idea!

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  5. Great idea! I shared it on FB.

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  6. What a great "hook" lesson for cursive writing. Love it. Thank you for sharing!

    -Krista
    The Second Grade Superkids

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