First grade in Italy is notoriously hard. I had not idea what to expect, but taught Sebastian all his letters and a little early reading this summer. I thought we might be adequately prepared.
Oh how I was wrong. The class is doing a cursive-intensive. They are not taking a letter a day; they are doing 4-5 letters a day. Now they are on two letter and even three letter combinations (eg. "bra, bre, bri, bro, bru").
How is a little six-year-old supposed to be able to have the manual skills to do that?>??>>>>??>?????
I have resorted to homeschool instruction. I am teaching him each letter at home. He had so much resistance at first that he would clam up and shut down. So I broke out the paints. We painted and painted different strokes and shapes and then finally turned them into letters. When he got the letter "h" it was so perfect, the whole family celebrated.
We have drawn letters (like the letter "a" below) in the gravel with our feet; we have used finger paints; we even took out Nutella yesterday and wrote huge letter "b's" with it. Then he licked his fingers clean. Now he is a master at "b's"!
I don't know if he'll be able to keep up with his class, and he may fail first grade, but I dare say he will be great a cursive one day!
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