(This post is also got featured  and re-shared on Hindi Gym)

 

In one of my old posts ‘Mother Tongue – a blessing for Indian kids‘, I shared my thoughts about the importance of knowing your mother tongue and how it helped me during my India trip.  I got a wonderful response.  When I shared it on my facebook page, it made me happy and surprised seeing that how many parents want this topic to be discussed. Few of the readers asked me how I taught my daughter to write in Hindi/Marathi? I came across this question quite a few times among my friends too. So, here are my ways that helped me in teaching my daughter the writing part. Hope this post ‘Learning to write Hindi’ will give you some ideas that you can incorporate in your teaching style.

Before moving towards our topic for today’s post ‘Learning to write Hindi’,  I would like to point out few very important things that you will need during this teaching span. They all might seem to be very normal points but first read them, promise yourself and then start.

 

• BE VERY PATIENT:  Don’t expect results within few days. Keep one thing in mind – you are trying to introduce a language to your child that s(he) was not exposed to. Give it some time. Appreciate their efforts. It works like magic.

 

• BE CONSISTENT:  Now, when you have started, be consistent. They will forget with even a few days of gap and you have to start all over again. This happened with me. When we moved to Houston, before that my daughter was comfortable with all the alphabets. During our move and later for a month or so I was not able to maintain that routine.  Then when I started again, even if she knew all the alphabets (I was confident about her), she was not 100% sure. This leads to the next point.

 

•  REPETITION MATTERS:  Repeat whenever and wherever possible. Encourage your child to write greeting cards, small letters, ask them to write their name.

If your child is young, say 3-3.5 years or so that means s(he) has started holding pencil and started to write English alphabets properly, you can try to add your language to the practice sessions. For me, one plus point was Marathi and Hindi both shares the same Devanagari script.

 

• TAKE ONE STEP AT A TIME: Decide the number of alphabets per day.  Do not jump into everything all at once. Start with simple alphabets, then half, then grammar.  Initially, keep it medium pace. Once, they get comfortable then slowly increase the number.

 

•  DON’T BE HARD ON YOURSELF: It is absolutely normal if your first few trials do not turn out the way you wanted. Keep trying.  Set a target for yourself. Very soon you will start seeing the results which you will be proud of.

 

• PAT YOUR BACK:  Congratulations, you did it!!

 

My technique with my daughter: Relate Hindi alphabets with English alphabets and Math numbers

When there are some known factors, things become easy.

 

 

You can try some other tricks. Find similarity that your kid can relate to. For example, for teaching ‘Na’, you can tell your child to remember the shape of the tap, or for ‘Ra’, remember capital letter ‘R’ but without the vertical line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOME TIPS:

   – Give them a sticker, a heart, a smiley face (this works great with small kids) with some encouraging comments in the end of their worksheet like: great job, well done, nice try, keep trying, nice handwriting, very neat.

–  Mention any specific alphabet that they have written perfectly and neatly – I like your ‘ –’.

  –  Once they are done with their maximum alphabets, start giving them dictation. Or play Guess the alphabets game where you will write and your kid will guess.

  –  Change the work surface if needed – Use white board instead of notebook once in a while. But not regularly.

These were my techniques of helping my daughter in learning to write Hindi. Whatever works for you and your child, that’s your technique. Feel free to share yours.