Tracework, Copywork, Dictation

I wouldn't have imagined even a month ago that my five-year-old would be writing from dictation. But this week, I've done an experiment using the same passage for Joshua's writing tasks on Monday, Thursday and Friday, and a related task on Tuesday. We memorised this verse in Circle Time last week, so Joshua was familiar with reading it in his own Bible and reciting it aloud before he ever had to write it. This is how he went.

Monday - tracework: Genesis 1:27.Tuesday - narration "Adam and Eve".Thursday - copywork: Genesis 1:27.Friday - dictation: Genesis 1:27a.I was absolutely blown away by how well Joshua went, and how quickly and ably he completed his dictation task today. At first he was shocked by being confronted by a blank page with no exemplar to copy, but when I reassured him he knew what he was going to write already, he calmed down enough to recite Genesis 1:27 all the way through with me. Then I told him the good news, that he didn't have to write the whole verse as on previous days, just the first bit. He brightened up at that and got started. With encouragement, but needing surprisingly little help, he was able to complete the task. He spelt every word correctly and only needed help on "created" (the d at the end) and "image" ("Is it J like in my name, Mummy?") Wow. A big thank you to Ruth Beechick!