Handwriting

Handwriting is an important part of who we are. Through practice we train our hand to form the letters quickly but practice makes perfect. When I first started teaching I thought handwriting just came naturally to kids and if I showed them how to do it on the board they would get it. Many did and things went well. Then I took a Spalding course. Honestly this was a course I HATED taking but I really did like a few of the strategies I took from the course.

The course teaches you to teach kids English like you would teach a foreign language. You brake everything down to the basics. I really liked how they taught handwriting. There were very specific vocabulary terms to help the kids form their letters. You can purchase the directions in their book "The Writing Road to Reading" from $15ish new and $7.50 used on Amazon if you are interested. I searched the internet but couldn't find a pdf of the handwriting instructions.

Here's a few suggestions to help improve your child's handwriting

1. Sit in the handwriting position - feet flat, head high, chair tucked and supporting your back (about 6in from the desk), back straight, arms comfortably on the desk.

2. Make sure they are holding the pencil the correct way - Thumb and pointer holding the pencil, other fingers behind supporting the pencil

3. Turn your paper opposite the direction that you write slightly. - If you write with your right hand turn the paper slightly to the left, if you write with the left hand, then turn your paper slightly to the right.

4. Don't learn to write the letters in alphabetical order, learn them in groups that are formed the same way - Here's a handwriting website that groups the letters for you and gives you some guidelines as to how to help your child - handwriting for kids

5. Use the same vocabulary to teach all the letters. - That's one of the things I really liked about the Spalding method. The vocabulary they used to teach the letters was the same across the board.

Handwriting for kids is a site with practice sheets for every letter. I like that they have a section detected to showing you how the letters are formed.

I also love that the practice sheets are FREE and just have to be printed off.

The only thing that bothered me was that the capital and lower case letters were on the same practice sheet even though they are formed in some cases, very different from their counter part. I would recommend tearing off the lower case letter practice section and doing those in separate groups according to how they are formed.