First day of school, not off to a very good start!

[~Roo'sMama~]

Andrew's starting Kindergarten this year, and we're homeschooling him. Today was the day I've been planning on starting, and he's been super excited for a couple weeks now. But a few days ago he shut his fingers on his right hand in the van door, and they're wrapped up in a big bandage so he can't hold a pencil. I feel so bad that the day he's waited for so long is finally here, and because of his hand the whole thing kind of fell flat. We did a couple things, but he had to use his left hand and it was too discouraging for him. Not a very good start to the year! Now I'm not sure if I should keep going, just doing what little we can every day until his hand is better, or hold off entirely until it heals enough for him to be able to use a pencil. I'm afraid if I wait too long he will lose interest all together, but I'm also afraid that if we keep going like this he'll get too discouraged and not want to do it at all. Plus he's not really learning how to write his letters and numbers when he has to do a shaky job with his left hand! I don't know what to do!

[Nina J]

What about doing activities that don't involve writing? Like letter recognition? You could make some flash cards of the alphabet and do letter reognition, or use them to spell words out - i.e. 'it', 'a', 'him', etc.

You could do flash cards with numbers too and work on some simple math things.

Good luck! Don't let this set back get in the way. I think if you remain enthusiastic, Andrew will too