Helping children writing the letter M

Today I spent my time working with small groups, helping children trace and write the letter M. It is important that they write the letter the correct way, so making sure they are following the system is a tedious task. For capital M is supposed to be drawn from the head line to the footling. They then pick up their pencils and draw up, down, up down. They seem to be relatively okay with this. A select few want to draw the first stroke from the foot line to the the head line. They have a great deal of trouble with the lowercase m, as they are told to draw down, up, up hump, up hump. All of them want to start at the foot line. The solution is saying the foot line is stinky, and never start at the stinky feet. This is helpful, but it still fails to stick with some of the children. It was hard to give them all the attention they needed, and sass from a naughty student did no help matters. I now know what to expect though and will be more prepared when I work with a letter again wednesday.