We have been reading the story of Casey the caterpillar who hatches out of an egg and meets lots of different animals or shapes in her journey to becoming a butterfly. The story is part of a handwriting programme called The Magic Caterpillar we are using in Te Kōhanga.

In this programme, we will focus primarily on the formation of lowercase letters because these are the letters that we use most often and are the trickiest to form correctly. 

Below is the language we use and the shapes used to form each letter. For example c, o, a,d, g and q all start with a c shape that we call Casey’s open mouth. We can group h, n and m together because these letters all have a tunnel shape in them. And j, y and g all have a possum tail shape that hangs below the line. We talk about tall sticks and short sticks and how when we write them they always have to go “down to the branch” which is how we remind ourselves to always start at the top of the line or the middle of a line when we write a letter.