A Review

Category: Books
Genre: Childrens Books
Author: Mead Writing Fundamentals
My sweet friend, Jenny, a fellow SAHM and homeschooler as well, recently introduced me to Mead's Writing Fundamentals Series. The products are top-notch in both presentation and content, in my humble opinion.

The first book we started with this week is called "Snip It!". It's chock full of snipping and cutting activities intended to develop preschoolers' fine motor skills by training them in scissor skills, eye-hand coordination, introducing pre-writing shapes, adherence to visual boundaries, construction skills for pre-writing, and paper stabilization.

The parent note on the inside cover states: "Writing Fundamentals by MEAD make it easy for you to provide your children with engaging fine motor activities to develop the skills necessary to become successful writers."

That's all well and good and sounds profoundly professional, but the bottom line for me is this: until now, my 4 year old hated trying to use the scissors at all. Now, he enthusiastically approaches his work and is so proud of his accomplishments that my little Mommy heart fairly bursts with excitement over this little book.

The second book we've worked with is called Shape Builders. Also intended for fine motor development, Shape Builders Stencil Kit "is a fun and rewarding way to introduce the essential skills of forming pre-writing shapes while developing pencil control, sequencing, paper stabilization and the construction skills needed for letter formation."

What it boils down to is a nice, sturdy stencil with several basic shapes that allow the child to find the shapes needed to build the picture, and construct a picture based on the easy visual instructions provided. Nathan loves this one too and is definitely increasing in confidence with each exercise. He really feels proud of himself when he sees what he's made. This product is SO completely complete - excuse my redundancy - that the stencil even has little rubber gripper Helping Hands to show the child where to hold the stencil to stabilize it. Love it, love it, Looooooove it!!