Teaching left and right intuitively
My daughter’s teacher wrote a comment on one of the worksheets she brought home. Darling Angel needs to learn her left and right. I don’t know why she still mixes up her left and right even up until now. We’ve been learning left and right since she was three years old. Two years later, she sometimes gets it and she sometimes doesn’t. After writing the last statement, I realize she doesn’t really get it, afterall, guessing would serve her right 50% of the time.
The left hand L
I had shared the plight of the left and right mix up with a colleague and she shared a trick which I hoped would help Darling Angel to consistently identify the right (and left) side. I got home that day and showed Darling Angel how she could hold up her two hands and identify the left one. You hold both hands up, palms facing away and fingers pointing up and thumb at 90 degree angle to the fingers. The hand that makes an L is the left one.
“Now you know which one is your left hand”, I said excitedly. “Don’t you see the L?” She looked at me doubtfully. “See, the L, the L!”, I panted, grabbing her left hand and holding up for her to see. “You see the L?”.
She looked at both hands. “Yes?”, she still sounded doubtful.
The left hand L did not work and it’s not surprising. Sometimes, Darling Angel writes her alphabets in mirror image (something I’m hoping will work itself out with time), so the right hand mirror L probably looked just as good an L as the left hand L.
The intuitive Right
I soon forgot about the left hand L and teaching how to identify sides. Until the note came home from look. Then I had a brain wave. Well, a simple idea really. And I can’t imagine why I hadn’t thought of it earlier. Why not rely on the child’s intuitive identification of her right side?
“Which hand do you write with?”, I asked. She looked sullen. She’s read her teacher’s note. She doesn’t like to fall short of wonderful.
“I don’t know” she replied.
“Okay, pretend you have a pencil in your hand and you’re writing something”.
“But I can’t find my pencil, mommy. I only have a crayon.”
“Okay, pretend you have a crayon. Write something in the air.”
“I’ll write my name”, she said as she made motions with the imaginary crayon in her right hand.
“Guess what”, I said with all the excitement I could muster. “You always write with your right hand.” I continued, “If you want to know which is your right hand, pretend to write, you’ll see it’s your right hand writing.”
She smiled sheepishly as she examined her right hand in wonder.
“Show me your right hand”, I said. She showed me her right hand.
“What about your right foot”, I asked. She showed me her right foot.
We repeated this a couple of times with different right parts of the body. Then we had dinner. “Show me your right hand?” I asked again.
“Mommy, I’m tired of showing you my right hand. I want to show you my left hand.”
“Okay, show me your left hand.” She raised up her left hand.
Darling Angel could hardly wait to go back to school the following day. She wants to show her teacher that she has now mastered her lefts and rights.
Unless a child is ambidextruous, she will intuitively use one side for key tasks like handling cutlery, coloring, brushing teetch etc. Just teach the child what the side she uses is and she intuitively knows that the side she doesn’t use as much is the opposite one.
