Along those Cursive Lines & Straight Strokes

When Sienna was 3 and half years old, her preschool teacher encouraged her to write in cursive, instead of printing in strokes. That teacher deserves a big bouquet of flowers from me. Now, not only Sienna writes English in cursive better than a lot of adults, it seems, it made it easier for her to pick up her skill of writing her Chinese in strokes.

In the past few months, she has learnt how to write (without copying) several hundreds Chinese characters, and she reads (recognizes) even more. A game she and I play must help to get both languages going at the same time: we translate each of these Chinese words into English and vise versa. Some of them cannot be translated into each other directly. That's just the right place to open the mind for more flexibility and tolerance.

It's interesting to note: She learnt to write the more linear language, English, in cursive and now she has to learn strokes to write the more circular Chinese language. What a wonderful ground to lay the foundation for the mind to grow! And here comes my preaching, with a little deliberate effort, any situation can be made into an advantage.