Riddley-Doodley Drawings 1 by Lucia Muntean

What if there was a way to make difficult things easy to learn?

One of the big childhood struggles is learning how to write. Mastering the fine motor skills necessary for handwriting requires tedious repetition of abstract graphic signs. Children quickly develop resistance to this kind of activity, not only because it is physically difficult, but mostly because the ”abstract” part of it makes it intellectually and emotionally unrewarding.

Lucia Muntean faced this challenge year after year as a kindergarten teacher until she came up with the idea behind Riddley-Doodley Drawings. One day she put the graphic signs required to write letters and numbers together in a drawing that made sense to her pupils, that of a hedgehog. She then wrote the step-by-step instructions for making the drawing in rhymes so that her pupils would find them easy to remember. She tried this activity in her next class and was quick to discover not only that her pupils loved it, but they also loved playing with it again and again.

And do you know what was the added bonus? Her pupils now developed not only their handwriting skills but also, perhaps more importantly, their self-esteem. Once they learnt to say the rhymes and do the drawing, they enjoyed the satisfaction of having completed a full development journey that started with the example provided by their educator and ended with them being able to do everything by themselves.

Rooted in over 40 years of direct classroom practice, Riddley-Doodley Drawings helps educate children on handwriting while keeping them naturally engaged.