So frustrated! I really need to remediate my ds8's handwriting...

[Allearia]

Ds 8's handwriting is much worse than ds5's.

 

He writes quite long stories/narrations now (sometimes 2-3 handwritten pages) and I have not wanted to slow him down by making him worry about handwriting. But it seems to be getting worse not better.

 

Should I just focus on very careful copywork for a few weeks with me watching and correcting? Should we do more cursive? Should we do typing for longer writing and careful handwriting for shorter? Any tips on remediating at this point? He does a lot of work ahead of where he would be age wise but I do think it is important for his handwriting to be legible.

 

and spelling... that is another battle...

[Tidbits of Learning]

We have used Handwriting Without Tears successfully for remediating.

[Oakblossoms]

We switched to Getty Dubay Italics. It is excellent.

[Stellalarella]

Some good questions to ask yourself are:

 

Does my student have the skill to write well?

If no, then there are a lot of folks who could share about programs they used to help a child with handwriting. We had great success with Handwriting Without Tears when one of our dc needed help with handwriting. My dd came home from PS with really horrible pencil grip and poor letter formation. For an older ds, I found that he needed some cursive retraining, so we used Pictures in Cursive. I graded each day's sentence with E for Excellent, A for acceptable, and U for Unacceptable. I worked with him on specific cursive skills. He was able to demonstrate that he COULD write with good penmanship.

 

Has my student internalized the need to use proper penmanship?

Once I knew that my ds COULD write neatly, I realized that he still found it I easier to write sloppy. I decided to make it harder for him to write sloppy by requiring that all sloppy work be recopied. After a few times of recopying (which was of course greeted by profuse whining, angst, and protest) he realized that it was more cost-effective to use good penmanship the first time. Over the course of the last 4 MONTHS, his penmanship and attitude about penmanship has improved greatly.

 

My dd who greatly struggled with penmanship also improved over the course of a few months and skipped the 2nd grade HWT book and happily went onto HWT cursive.

[hsbaby]

No advice, just want to say I am right there with ya with ds7. I swear,it's worse than just a few months ago. I was just thinking of getting a writing program to help, so thanks for the suggestions!!

[MSNative]

We switched to Getty Dubay Italics. It is excellent.

:iagree: My son's handwriting was awful. I showed him a few samples of different books and asked him which style he'd like to master. He chose Italics. It's so easy and my kids don't fuss about doing it.

 

Good luck whatever you choose. You are not alone!! :)

[NineChoirs]

With my youngest son I quickly learned that less is more. Too much writing and he stopped even trying to make it nice. Also interesting enough his cursive was much nicer than his print.

 

He, like alot of boys, took awhile to develop fine motor skills. It made handwriting tedious for him. What I would do is have him do short copywork (one line in a handwriting book, or a single sentence) as daily practice. This helped him practice proper form without feeling overwhelmed. He would actually try very hard and it looked very nice. Gradually over time his ability to write nicer on longer writing assignments increased. Until he got to that point I only required that his other written work be legible. I also allowed him to answer questions verbally. Typing could work also but I would be wary of spell checkers.

 

Once he became more capable of longer writing assignments I had him start with a rough draft and told him to not worry about handwriting at all. This way he could focus on what he was writing instead of how it was written. Then we would go through it together and check for spelling & grammar. First he would go through it alone with a red pen circling mistakes, then I would go through it again and catch the ones he missed. He was very proud of the corrected work knowing it contained no errors. He would then very neatly copy it into his composition notebook that was his to keep.

 

He still gets lazy and sloppy sometimes, but he can be very nice and neat when he wants to be. :001_smile:

[Allearia]

Thanks for the advice so far. We do have the Italics book that we never kept up with, maybe I will get it out and just keep up with it. He really has a hard time with seeing the reason for keeping it neat. So far today I copied his very messy paper myself with neat handwriting and am sitting with him while he pays careful attention to forming each letter. He is doing a sentence at a time with lots of breaks and it looks good but I have to keep reminding him to pay attention to where to start every other letter or so. I think it is very hard to write longer passages because the hand gets sore, mine got sore just copying what he wrote!

[TKDmom]

He writes quite long stories/narrations now (sometimes 2-3 handwritten pages) and I have not wanted to slow him down by making him worry about handwriting. But it seems to be getting worse not better.

 

With my youngest son I quickly learned that less is more. Too much writing and he stopped even trying to make it nice. Also interesting enough his cursive was much nicer than his print.

 

My dd9 has very nice handwriting (Getty-Dubay has helped immensely here), but if I insist that she write more than a few sentences, it goes downhill quickly. Are you asking him to write multiple pages for school, or are these things he's doing on his own? If it is school, I would ask for his neatest handwriting and then scribe for him after 2 sentences. Or, scribe all of it and ask him to copy a couple of sentences (or give the sentences as dictation). If they were his own stories for fun, I'd ignore the handwriting.

[Allearia]

My dd9 has very nice handwriting (Getty-Dubay has helped immensely here), but if I insist that she write more than a few sentences, it goes downhill quickly. Are you asking him to write multiple pages for school, or are these things he's doing on his own? If it is school, I would ask for his neatest handwriting and then scribe for him after 2 sentences. Or, scribe all of it and ask him to copy a couple of sentences (or give the sentences as dictation). If they were his own stories for fun, I'd ignore the handwriting.

 

They are for school. This is why I am thinking I want to get his typing up to speed. His actual writing is wonderful and he has no problem with the length, it is just the handwriting part. Unfortunately I bought Typing Instructor but couldn't get it to work on any of my computers and it was a while ago so I probably can't get a refund. I might just bite the bullet and get something else. I definitely don't want him to get frustrated in writing for something like this, he mostly enjoys it which is why I have tried not to stress about the handwriting so far but like I said it is getting worse...

[Sasharowan]

Unfortunately I bought Typing Instructor but couldn't get it to work on any of my computers and it was a while ago so I probably can't get a refund. I might just bite the bullet and get something else.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ This is what dd and ds9 use for typing. I have seen a huge jump in their typing skills this year from using this 3 days a week for about 15-20 min. a day.