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After reading a little in The 3R's by Ruth Beechick I am questioning whether my 5yr old son needs to be writing more. He is doing great in his reading and we are on lesson 14 of the Reading Lesson-over half-way in our reading program. But I am wondering if he needs to write more words or just do what LHFHG recommends. We do A Reason for Handwriting K. He does not like writing but lately has been sounding out and trying to spell words on his on and writing on a piece of paper or drawing board a little.

So do I add more or let it come later?
In the 3R's Ms. Beechick stated that it helped with learning to write it.

Also another quick ???? Is anyone a member of Enchanted Learning? Do you find that this is a great addition to your program or overdoing it.

Thanks so much in advance!!!!!

I would probably let a 5 year old continue to scribble and write on his own instead of giving him more "work". My son loves to write when it is his idea, and wants me to dictate the letters. But doing his handwriting book is always a chore. So what I always have to remember is, don't push...don't do more just because he can. And if I do want to do a little more... make it a game!
Dorla

Thanks Dorla! That's probably true. My son prefers to do things like that when he feels like it. I need to read more to him than anything else.

Also remember that most boys (general rule, some boys will differ!) don't seem to be as inclined to want to write as girls. I have boy/girl twins, and my dd will write stories, make lists, write letters, do as many workbook pages as I will let her..... and my ds does the bare minimum of everything!

I just recently started having him try to write very short stories and copy sentences for copywork, and he'll be 7 in about a week. I think you're fine to just keep in simple and work on it in later years when he is more ready (or as ready as any boy can be!)

I'm also a Beechick fan, by the way!

Enchanted Learning does look like a great site, but I'm not a member.

I am a member of Enchanted Learning and do not really use it that much just because it takes time to search, print, etc. etc. and then when I do have extra time I do not want to spend it there! However we used it quite a bit before we found LHFHG and used to do lapbooks. It is definitely worth the money if you are going to use it.
Dorla

my boys don't write very much at all. I waffle between worrying about it and not worrying about it! In a perfect world, we'd do a lot more writing, but in MY world, I'm happy when even part of the work gets done!

I have a five year old in LHFG and actually a three year old that will be four in a couple of months. So they each do the program the same but writing different. My three year old has more of the R&S preschool books like Do It Carefully and she does those. My five year old is a self induced copy work addict so I go to notebooking.com and print out pretty paper and she does copy work from McGuffy primer or whatever she wants. So mine do extra BUT they want to do extra. They want to do school while the big kids do and so this is there kind of filler time as they want. So we have it but it is sort of optional and not quite so structured. Have to say copy work is amazing my three year old is starting it and wow it really works. I don't even get why it works but it does.

HTH!