This book is good for us.A little background first:My child has a summer birthday, was 4 all last academic year and we homeschooled preschool. He really disliked using pencils or crayons. We tried writing a few times, but it wasn’t working out. To develop the motor skills needed for writing we did Kumon’s My first book of cutting, play dough, finger paint and some coloring with pencils (the day on a calendar for math – Saxon Math K).Several months ago I went to the local school to register him. They informed me that children entering K should know how to write the whole alphabet and the numbers 1-20 and gave me two handouts and the suggestion that we practice. While we decided to homeschool K as well, I want him to “catch up” with his writing and we got a Kumon workbook for upper case letters and this one, because he can count to 100.How I felt about the book before using it:When I got the book I was very skeptical this book would work for him due to last year’s struggles with writing and coloring. Early on it expects the child to trace the numbers and then copy them below in a box. It doesn’t have little numbers or arrows to tell you how to write the numbers properly. I imagine that is available in the Kumon book of numbers 1-30, but I am not sure. I had to look them up to make sure I write them correctly. It happens I do [happy face].To my amazement, he had not trouble copying the numbers after tracing! They are a little wobbly but legible. The book moves quickly as it expects kids already know how to write or understand 1-10. We did a math curriculum that was very hands on last year and he can read the numbers fine, so this book is moving at the right pace for my son. Because after all, when he moves on from 1-10 he is just practicing the same digits over and over. I am not sure that a younger child who is not already very familiar with numbers would do well with this book as his or her first number book and should perhaps start with the Kumon 1-30 book.How we are using the book:I tear out a page from the book and we do one page per day (both sides). If we get a dot-to-dot page I ask him if he wants to do an extra numbers page. He sometimes wants to. For the summer this is all we are doing as far as formal math since I understand next year for K we will be adding and subtracting – which amazes me but that is a topic for another forum.What kinds of games you will find here:Dot-to-dots, tracing and copying, fill in the blank and finding a number sequence.update:While I plan on homeschooling K this next year, I took him to the local school for K “testing” which they had scheduled earlier this year when I went to inquire about K and enrollment before I was sure if we would homeschool or not. He has only been using this book for a few weeks and he aced the part where the teacher asked him to write the numbers 1 through 10 (write NOT copy) in a blank page. He was able to do it fairly well after only practicing with this book.Second update:We are on lesson page 27 and we have now gotten through several “dot to dot” excersices. Some are ok, but some are just not suitable for small children. The numbers are too small and most certainly not in order (from 31 to 80) and require very long lines and lifting the hand to look where the next number is amongst a jumble of numbers. I think these are fun for the parents and frustrating for the kids. Although, surely there will be a few kids who will find this fun… But not my child. I’ve decided to skip all those dot to dots I find innapropriate.For this reason I’m updating my rating from 5 stars “love” to 4 stars “like”.
