athena1277 Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 Dd is a good student, but her handwriting is terrible. I know part of it is she's the type of person who is always in a hurry, but even when she slows down her handwriting is only so-so. It's starting to affect her math work because her numbers are messy, too. She just turned 8yo and I have finally realized that time and maturity are not going to change her handwriting without some help. Any suggestions? I am really at a loss here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azalea Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 At Lulu.com you will find many types of copybooks for extra practice. These have worked beautifully for my children. We use Handwriting Without Tears and there simply was not enough practice in the regular workbooks for my kids to improve. At Lulu search for history copybooks. Good luck. Azalea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diane65 Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 Just found this excellent free link today on our W.M. homeschooling group from Lori. http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rafiki Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
athena1277 Posted January 6, 2011 Author Share Posted January 6, 2011 She does handwriting every day, but it doesn't seem to help her improve. Besides tons of practice or making her re-do the whole assignment, what can I do to help her improve? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElizabethB Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 HWT is good to try, I like the chalkboard and wet dry try, you can do the wet for them at first and have them trace it. I also like working on a white board first, it is easier to make things neater when you are writing larger. I use Zaner Bloser self instruction in handwriting, it is set up very nicely. I do it from the white board. http://shop.zaner-bloser.com/p-905-self-instruction-in-handwriting.aspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
engu Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 :lurk5: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thowell Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 We have the same problem here and Dd is 10. She has always had poor handwriting and I suspect may always. I have tried fountain pens, special grips, special paper, everything I can think of and nothing seems to work. Alot like your kid she is always in a hurry but even when she really slows down and tries it is still messy. So (not that we have given up) I make sure that whatever she is writing is readable and that is as good as it gets. I allow her to write print or cursive and am trying to teach her how to type. She has alot of the symptoms of dysgraphia so I am trying not to push her too much. I wish I had some advice for you but I do wish you luck. And let me know if you find something that works! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mytwomonkeys Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 is she doing cursive yet? i taught my daughter cursive at age 8. her manuscript was fairly poor then (legible...just not "pretty"). now that she writes in cursive (which is beautiful), it has also has helped her manuscript. she also writes narrations from her history & science daily (just a paragraph), but that has improved her handwriting as well. hth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwilliams Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 If she learned bad habits during printing the best strategy is to teach cursive and always sit with her during cursive writing until she develops good habits. At this age, it is almost impossible to remediate poor manuscript.....the habits are too ingrained. I am an occupational assistant and have worked in the school system and with children on handwriting issues for years. Make sure when teaching cursive that no bad habits are being carried over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hunter Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 rwilliams, have you noticed if switching to a drastically different font, will facilitate remediation, if it is mostly a matter of badly formed habits, rather than a disability? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwilliams Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 rwilliams, have you noticed if switching to a drastically different font, will facilitate remediation, if it is mostly a matter of badly formed habits, rather than a disability? All the students that I worked with had dysgraphia. The only difference I would think in helping a student with poor habits and a student with dysgraphia and poor habits would be the level of intensity in the remediation. I have never been able to remediate poor manuscript past second grade effectively when the writing started in Kindergarten. The best approach was to teach cursive. I never taught a different font because we followed the school curriculum. I would think changing font would be worth a try but cursive is the most likely to suceed. Plus, cursive is how adults write so there may be more motivation to learn. Just for info.... If cursive is learned and habits are formed poorly the next opportunity is to teach keyboarding. I recommend learning proper keyboarding without looking. This helps with kids who also have trouble with skills like copying and transferring. The real goal I think is to write in a manner in which you are able to communicate ideas fluently. Most kids have always been the most fluent on the keyboard. This freed up alot of mental energy they were using to form letters into actually forming ideas and thoughts. Dysgraphic kids would get bogged down in the mechanics of writing and lose progress with the skills or organizing thoughts, paragragh development and the higher skills involved in writing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siloam Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 If she learned bad habits during printing the best strategy is to teach cursive and always sit with her during cursive writing until she develops good habits. At this age, it is almost impossible to remediate poor manuscript.....the habits are too ingrained. I am an occupational assistant and have worked in the school system and with children on handwriting issues for years. Make sure when teaching cursive that no bad habits are being carried over. I pretty much agree with this. There won't be a big change on manuscript unless the child decides they want it to change. There are a few things that might help. Often kids like to push down on the pencil too hard, which exhausts the hand. If that is a problem then a good fountain pen will break that habit. If you press down with a fountain pen it leaves an ink blob, so they are forced to re-learn how much pressure to use. Also I spend the extra money to buy soft leads, so when they do use pencils they write dark with little pressure. Overall they have to care. I am probably dysgraphic, yet I have beautiful handwriting. That stems from being taught Calligraphy by my grandmother. Once I cared what my handwriting looked like I started to correct my manuscript and cursive. Now I receive compliments on my writing, but the only way I get there is by writing slowly. If they child refuses to slow down and try, there isn't a lot you can do. BTW I do have hand cramping after just a page of writing in a journal (not a regular 8x10 piece of paper). I tend to change my grip because of it, sometimes using a correct grip and sometimes not. Otherwise it just starts hurting too much and I have to stop. Heather Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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