VIDEO: Identifying Lowercase Print

I have mentioned it before, but if you’re new to Montessori, it’s recommended to start with lowercase cursive. We didn’t know that, so we started with uppercase print, then moved to lowercase print, and now we are introducing lowercase cursive. I think uppercase cursive is tedious and almost unnecessary. If he really likes learning letters, we’ll do uppercase cursive. But truthfully, when I write in cursive (which is regularly!), I usually use uppercase print letters to start my sentences.

Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge soon enough!

In the video above, I’m using a dry erase magnetic board that I got at Target for $3.00. I couldn’t find it online, so I can’t share a link to it! If you have a Target, check those bins at the front of the store that hold the $1 and $3 items!

We played this “game” about 20 times (literally). In the video, we’re going through lowercase print letters. I changed how we went through the letters: sometimes, I would ask him to point out a particular letter. Other times, I would ask him to point out whichever letter he wanted. Either way, I erased the letters as we went through them. That way, I could leave the tougher letters for the end (like a lowercase b, d, p, and q, and also lowercase f and t).

Here’s what happened if he got a letter wrong: if I said “point to the R” and he pointed to the H instead, I would say, “That’s H!” And then I would say “point to the H” to quickly reinforce the correct letter.

Here are two other versions we did:

1. I did more than just lowercase print. We did uppercase print and lowercase cursive. He’s lowercase cursive!

2. I also did a mixed version that included uppercase and lowercase print. He did really well with this one, for some reason. He knocked out most of the uppercase first, and then he moved onto lowercase.