Preschool Teachers - tutoring question

Pardon my ignorance-- I don't have kids to figure out these milestones-- but what THREE YEAR OLD has handwriting to speak of? Why is that even a skill mother is fretting over?

How many sessions will you have with her?  

If her mom wants her to work on handwriting I say start with her name.  Can she write her name correctly?  If she is writing in all caps or isn't forming the letters correctly I'd work on those.  Choose two consonants to work on each time.  Teach her to write those letters correctly and to choose a picture and say which letter it begins with.  Have her sort the letters.  Say you are working on c and t, have several c's and t's and have sort them.  You could work on the letters that begin a color word and work on color recognition also.  Or just work on the letters in her name.  Make up some matching games.  Not sure how you'd work on coloring except to give her a color sheet but her mom should be able to do that.  Another thought is to introduce her to or work on rhyming.  There can never be too much rhyming!

Pre-schooler attention spans aren't very long so plan a lot of short activities.  I'd say besides number recognition, work on shape recognition also. Include a lot of movement, jumping, clapping, singing, running.

If you are only working with her every other week for the summer only there's no way you'll be able to do justice to all of the letters.  I imagine that is what she'll be doing in her four year old class in the Fall.

It would never occur to me to have my four year old in tutoring.    I taught pre-school and kindergarten for six or seven years before I started teaching the first grade. 

At that age I would only do some pencil work. A Laddie Tri-Write with or without a gripper will be a good place to start.

But I would have her use her finger to form the letter in sand, rice, salt, shaving cream, whatever. Put some tempera paint in a gallon ziploc bag and seal it, then lay it flat and have her make the letters in the paint.

We do rainbow writing to practice too - you write the letter in pencil, then she writes it in many different colored pencils over the top.

This is developmental, she will get proficient in the next two years. No need to stress too much over it now. She may not be developmentally ready to have handwriting proficiency - most kids her age aren't.

As for the mom's motivation or reason for wanting to tutor her child, it is common for parents to have a conference with a teacher who might tell them they feel that their child is struggling in XXX area and there might be a problem. The first reaction on the parent's part might be to try to get additional tutoring help (at the encouragement of the teacher) in order to nip things in the bud or perhaps to really determine if there is a developmental, cognitive, language or physical issue that tutoring and extra time can't fix. You might be the first step in trying to determine if this child has a problem that needs more serious intervention, so keep your eyes open and take notes!

Most of the others have mentioned the things that I would have encouraged you to do but I wanted to add that I think as far as handwriting is concerned to focus on developing fine motor strength and coordination by finding good activities that strengthen the muscles in her hand. Look on Pinterest, there are a ton of good fine motor activities there.

If I were you, I would ask the mom if you could at least do an hour each session since you will only be doing a session every two weeks, especially if you are travelling to the child. She should make it worth your time by giving you at least and hour per session.