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What does decent Kindergarten handwriting look like?


Reya
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My kiddo is 2E and quite dysgraphic. I know his handwriting is poor. I just need to know what I'm aiming for here at the end of next school year so I can know when I'm okay and when to freak out or push a little harder. Can someone post examples of their K-er's handwriting? Or that of a 1st or 2nd grader? I need to know what to aim for!

 

He's of an age to begin Kindy in the fall. Right now, all I'm having him do for penmanship is one page from Getty-Dubay Italic A and two lines of copywork (two lines on portrait-orientation K-2nd grade lined paper, so it amounts to "Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet"). I won't say that DS is THRILLED with the copywork, but having just two lines to do is manageable and he likes it okay, whereas four lines wear him out and demand too much out of him. For this reason, I hold his hand during spelling and shape the letters for him and do the same for the hard numbers to shape in math. He does always have to write his name on every sheet of paper, though.

 

Is this the right amount of writing for a K-aged kid? Too little? I know it's less than he'd do in a public school, but I do make sure he writes as neatly as he can, which requires a lot more effort than slap-dash writing. So I'm hoping it's fine. I don't want to wring him out.

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I'd like to see some samples too. We are nearing the end of our K year, and while dd's handwriting is certainly legible, it's nothing fabulous. I'm trying to slowly increase the amount of writing she does, as her hand tires easily. She has never really even liked to color because it makes her hand tired. I wonder about some hand-strengthening exercises?

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Okay . To me this was pretty decent. My 2nd daughter was doing Calvert 1st for K . But she was a kindergartener none the less. Of course she is 8 now and her handwriting has improved since then . She's also my best one with handwriting at the moment . So this is what she had at the end of the year . I have a few sheets where her handwriting was even a bit better then this .

 

scan0003-1-1.jpg?t=1206821487

 

Now my husband if I can dig out his 1st grade handwriting paper . His handwriting was Immaculate for a 1st grader . I mean unbelieveably immaculate. I asked him how he did that ( as his handwriting isn't that neat anymore ) and he said the nuns put the fear of God into him :>)

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My son, just turned 6 in March. He has atrocious print writing that is almost illegible. I also believe he is dyslexic. I stumbled across Cursive First and after reading the 14 page essay as to why to teach cursive first, I am convinced. My son's writing is beautiful. This first picture is from when he had just finished learning all his letters (9/20/07) at 5 1/2. He wrote his first copywork after finishing his spelling list of 10 words. He had very little practice (each letter practice sheet was 1/2 page).

scan0017.jpg

This second picture was his copywork yesterday.

scan0018.jpg

 

I truly believe that cursive writing helps the children to write more legibly and it helps mitigate a lot of the switching letters back and forth. Cursive First cost me $14 and can be used for all my kids because everything is reproducible. It is not a fancy program either.

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because it teaches the proper strokes. My son is a young 1st and I just make sure he is forming the strokes correctly. The perfecting will come later, as he doesn't have a lot of fine motor coordination, so staying perfectly on lines is not that easy. We just do a little bit as often as possible. That works.

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We're at the stage of learning to write various letters and stay in the lines when forming them. I'm not too finicky about her stroke order and direction unless it's affecting how the word turns out. Time enough for that with cursive (which we'll likely do in first grade) and calligraphy (third grade). Right now my focus is on building hand strength and using the writing to reinforce her mastery of the letter names and sounds.

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Everybody else's samples look soooo nice! I guess I'm a slacker on the handwriting. I kind of figured that, in Kindergarten, if I could tell what letter it was supposed to be, then he was doing great.

 

I will say though, that my ds's printing now (he's 8) is about as good as my dh's, only ds writes bigger letters. We haven't touched cursive much. He hates it and that wasn't a battle I was going to pick (at least not yet).

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Thanks so much, everybody! The more samples I've got, the better idea I have of where we should be going.

 

He's mostly got the strokes down. Before I started real copywork (this week), he didn't retain them well at all. But now stuff is staying in his head a lot better. Reversing letters isn't really a problem in Getty Dubay because they teach largely continuous stroke rather than ball-and-stick letters. The spacing between parts of letters are a bugbear right now, like not tracing the line back down for n and a. He also can't always keep track of how many lines for a W or M. Word spacing and spacing between letters is a major problem, though it's getting better. He's also getting much better at starting letter at the right height but needs reminders fairly often.

 

I know my own handwriting was atrocious (no direct handwriting instruction!--I still hold a pencil badly), so I'm trying to avoid a repeat!

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If you're still looking for samples, here's one of my oldest son's handwriting last June, at the end of kindergarten when he was 6 1/2. He loves to practice handwriting (not sure what planet he's from!) He is a TOTAL perfectionist, exceedingly conscientious of his handwriting, obsesses over letters that look funny :rolleyes: even though I don't push him at all. I just have him do one line a day and it needs to be the best he can do. My second child is so different and will probably never ever be that neat, though for the record, my oldest isn't nearly so neat when not writing on handwriting paper.

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My son, just turned 6 in March. He has atrocious print writing that is almost illegible. I also believe he is dyslexic. I stumbled across Cursive First and after reading the 14 page essay as to why to teach cursive first, I am convinced. My son's writing is beautiful. This first picture is from when he had just finished learning all his letters (9/20/07) at 5 1/2. He wrote his first copywork after finishing his spelling list of 10 words. He had very little practice (each letter practice sheet was 1/2 page).

scan0017.jpg

This second picture was his copywork yesterday.

scan0018.jpg

 

I truly believe that cursive writing helps the children to write more legibly and it helps mitigate a lot of the switching letters back and forth. Cursive First cost me $14 and can be used for all my kids because everything is reproducible. It is not a fancy program either.

 

Marisa, do I understand correctly - you believe the first sample to be illegible?

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Guest Jill in Monroe

Cursive First has been mentioned several times. Where can this be purchased? I've used Sing, Spell, Read & Write successfully with my two oldest (now dd12, and dd10) and am using it somewhat successfully with my ds7. But I'm looking to begin teaching my energetic and eager dd4 how to write in cursive and this looks like a good place to begin.

 

Thanks

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Marisa, do I understand correctly - you believe the first sample to be illegible?

 

No not at all! If my son writes in print, the letter spacing is all wrong, letters in the wrong order, letters on top of eachother or under eachother, and it can be illegible. With cursive writing, although his spacing between words and sometimes between letters is not perfect, his writing is extremely legible.

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Cursive First has been mentioned several times. Where can this be purchased?

 

 

Some places include http://swrtraining.com/id17.html

and

http://shop.morningstarlearning.com/category.sc?categoryId=2

 

I also bought the sandpaper cursive cards at the WHO convention. I love them! Morning Star has them and so does Back Home Industries.

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