Learning Letters in the Classroom

The classroom that I attend for my field experience is a 3-4 year old preschool class. They use Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum. Each week we learn a new letter and this week was V. My host teacher does a large group activity to introduce the letter and later does a small group activity with one or two children at a time to reinforce the letter they are learning.
The Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum offers many different activities to teach uppercase letters. It teaches to write letters based on big lines, small lines, big curves, small curves, and diagonals.
To teach the letter V, my host teacher began with demonstrating the two diagonal lines with magnetic strips on the board. Then, the children are given the chance to say words that begin with this letter. Once there is a list of words they have come up with, she gets out the V can of alphabet soup. The can contains different objects that begin with the letter. After that, a small booklet is used to show pictures of more objects that start with V. After they discuss everything they have that starts with V, they say goodbye to all of the objects.
Example: Violin.
Teacher: Who remembers what this instrument is?
Children: Violin!
Teacher: Let's say goodbye to our violin.
Children: Goodbye violin!
Once all of the objects are put up, they watch a letter video on the smartboard from ABCKids.
Later in the day my host teacher calls one or two children to a table at a time to work on the letter they were introduced to that week. She uses tracing worksheets provided by the Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum.
Example:The children trace the letters referencing big lines, small lines, big curves, small curves, and diagonal terminology. After they trace the letters they can color the object and they are done.
There are numerous other activities this curriculum offers that would be more fun and engaging that I would use along with these activities.
Wet Dry Try for example would be an activity I would  use to supplement the other activities. The children draw a letter on their small chalkboard with a wet sponge(the blue piece). Then they trace that with a tissue or towel to dry it. Finally, they try making the letter with chalk. Then they can keep repeating this process until they have accomplished their goals.


Overall, I think this curriculum is very beneficial and can work well with young children, if it is implemented often and reinforced with different activities that different children can enjoy.
The worksheet that the children in the classroom I am in rush through the tracing just so they can color the picture. That is why other activities need to be implemented to supplement this work.