writing/handwriting question

[Ame E.]

I've started to tutor a (homeschooled) child using Susan's Writing with Ease . This child tires very easily of writing. Her handwriting is not horrible.. and her attention to detail is not perfect, but it's okay.. She formed her p backwards, and left off the "e" in the... the problem is the task of writing seems to really tire her out. She is in second or third grade.. I have taken the "easy does it, but do it" approach.

 

The goal is to get her to get more comfortable with writing and to build fluency and to help correct letters that are not formed correctly. She finds it really hard work.

 

If you have any suggestions, please post..

 

Thanks

[amey311]

What about some exercises to build hand strength? I'm sure you could find some on the internet. We had things to do when Thing 1 was seeing the Occupational Therapist.

 

She also recommended that children use shorter pencils. Typically, an adult holding a traditional pencil has about 1.5" of pencil extend past her hand. A child using the same pencil has more, which is more to control. Thing 1 used golf sized pencils for a while that helped him.

[boscopup]

It sounds like you have 3 problems going on:

 

1) Forming the 'p' backwards. This is fairly common for the age. I've seen a huge reduction in this by teaching my son the HWT method of forming letters - For 'p', you "dive down, swim back up and around", and for a while there, I reminded him before he even wrote the letter, until it started becoming second nature. This took us about 3-4 weeks of me constantly watching every single letter he wrote. Now I'm starting to relax a bit. HWT isn't the only method you could use for this. It's just one example and is fairly commonly used (including by OTs). Another idea is to switch to cursive or a connected Italics (Getty-Dubay, for example). Either of those would remove the possibility of making a backwards 'p'.

 

2) Leaving off the 'e' in "the"... Was she doing copywork in this instance? As soon as my son misses a letter, I say "Whoops! You forgot something!" in a happy voice, not a stern voice. He looks at the word and realizes his mistake, fixes it, then moves on. If you're watching the copywork, these types of mistakes will be fixed quickly because you are helping them along.

 

3) Hand getting tired from writing. At her age, I think I would get her evaluated for this issue. It's normal for a 6 year old, like I have (and we are improving as we do many things orally and gradually increase the writing each day), but at 7 or 8, this shouldn't still be a problem as much. If she's getting tired just from doing one copywork sentence, that's a red flag to me.

[Tiberia]

This sounds like my kid. She just turned 7, and we started WWE1 in September. She really disliked it at first, but after a while she stopped complaining. Now she looks forward to the readings and doesn't mind the writing part. I still have to make some corrections, but she's made a lot of improvement in just a few months. So, I'd give it time and realize it's a process.

[Amie]

Perhaps she could begin learning cursive? This would help with reversals and may also provide better flow so she doesn't tire as easily. Also, make sure she has proper posture and pencil grip while writing.

[rwilliams]

Does she have a death grip on the pencil? If so try some compensatory strategies. soft pencil grips, hold something squishy in non-dominant hand, larger, fatter but shorter pencil......make sure she is sitting in an appropriate sized chair and appropriate sized table.

[Upstatemamma]

What about trying some drawing exercises with her? It might get her attention on something other than the act of writing. It would also give you the chance to find out how much of the actual writing is what tires her out.

[DawnL]

Check out the book Games For Writing, by Peggy Kaye. She has a lot of different games to get kids writing, and, as some have said, it includes hand-strengthening-type games, too.