Handwriting....Help!

[frugalmama]

I'm at my wits end with dd and handwriting. She detests handwriting in any kind of structured form, and her writing is all over the place. It's quickly turning into a stumbling block in our schooling, because dd does about half a line and starts whining and saying she can't do it.

 

It may be partially my fault. Last year for 1st we didn't school much, so we're continuing the 1st grade book this year for 2nd. In K we didn't do much writing either.

 

I'm using ZB grade 1 - is there something else out there better that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? Or could we take a year off from handwriting and come back to it next year? Or is this a case of I'm just going to have to get dd to buckle down and do it?

[ErinE]

From your siggie, is your child five? Anything more than a sentence may be too much writing for her. I'm a buckle-down-and-do-it gal and both of my kids did very well with Handwriting Without Tears.

[Hunter]

I don't know of this might be helpful.

[frugalmama]

If she is doing lots of writing in her other work, don't bother with a program. Are you doing any coprywork? How about calling that handwriting? If you must have a prgram, Handwriting Without Tears is a fav here.

 

She does some writing in her English program, but no copywork.

 

From your siggie, is your child five? Anything more than a sentence may be too much writing for her. I'm a buckle-down-and-do-it gal and both of my kids did very well with Handwriting Without Tears.

 

She will be 6 in 10 days. I'm really trying to work with her on writing the letters correctly and using lowercase rather than all capitals.

[nansk]

I don't know of this might be helpful.

 

:iagree: This, and a few other Spalding handwriting links that Hunter posted in this forum earlier may be enough to help you get started.

 

You can teach handwriting without a curriculum. Also, at 6, even my dd balked at writing more than 1 sentence of 3-4 words. Things get much better after age 7.

[momsuz123]

How is she with other subjects? Is is just writing that is the issue? You got some great advice, but I'll throw my 2 cents in.

My now 7 year old dd really struggled last with writing, and reading, and actually lots of school. She is now in month 7 of vision therapy, and her whole world is changing. Her writing is hugely better. I know someone might come on her and yell at me for throwing the "vision thing" at you, but really, I was glad someone on this board brought it to my attention.

Just sayin. Good luck.

By the way, we actually totally backed off of writing last year, and now are diving into it - big difference. Sometimes taking a break for awhile isn't a bad idea.

[StartingOver]

My son is six doing 2nd also. We have worked really hard over the last year on writing. With his math, spelling, copywork in cursive and WWE it is a lot. We have the same issue with capitals in words amd not only in the beginning of a sentence or on Proper nouns. Most days I will scribe all but the WWE and Dictaion in AAS for him.

 

Writing is very hard work. Maybe focus on hamdwriting and scribe for the rest?

[frugalmama]

How is she with other subjects? Is is just writing that is the issue? You got some great advice, but I'll throw my 2 cents in.

My now 7 year old dd really struggled last with writing, and reading, and actually lots of school. She is now in month 7 of vision therapy, and her whole world is changing. Her writing is hugely better. I know someone might come on her and yell at me for throwing the "vision thing" at you, but really, I was glad someone on this board brought it to my attention.

Just sayin. Good luck.

By the way, we actually totally backed off of writing last year, and now are diving into it - big difference. Sometimes taking a break for awhile isn't a bad idea.

 

She's great with everything else. She doesn't mind writing for her reading comprehension book or her english book most of the time but those are mostly single words. Her handwriting book right now she is still working on pages of single letters. But 90% of her letters are capitals and her letter sizing is irregular to say the least. Maybe I will take a little break from it for a while and then come back to it.

[1GirlTwinBoys]

If it were me, and since she's almost 6, I would require her to write one short sentence each day so you can focus on proper letter formation. You could let her do spelling on a lap whiteboard, which would take some writing pressure off her.:) We still use the whiteboard for our spelling program.

[sherideane]

DS-8 has the same issues with writing... it started right off in preschool with poor fine-motor skills and it has been a problem ever since. He detests writing, forms his letters improperly (it's a huge battle to get him doing it the way he's always been taught) and still does capitals mixed throughout. It takes him SO LONG to finish a sentence that he even forgets what he was going to write before he's done. However, he's advanced in reading and spelling.

 

The more I researched it, the more I kept coming up with the high possibility that he has Dysgraphia... (and we're going to get some testing for that through the school district). From what I've read, Dysgraphia just means there is some blocking of the neural pathways and writing isn't moving into "automatic mode" as it should. It's as if the child just learned to write yesterday... but every day! One clue to the possibility that it's dysgraphia is a simple, DIY test to see if she's "mixed dominant"... that is, whether her hand dominance matches her eye dominance. Tear a tiny hole out of the center of a piece of paper. Hold it out at arms-length and look through the hole, focusing on something across the room. Not moving the paper, close one eye, then the other. The eye that still sees the thing you focused on is your dominant eye. For the other eye, it will disappear. Most people's eye dominance matches their hand dominance. For those that don't, there is a good chance they will have problems with writing (i.e., dysgraphia). Being mixed dominant doesn't equate having dysgraphia... just makes it more likely.

 

DS *is* mixed dominant, and I look forward to getting him tested so we can possibly get him some OT and get his writing into 'automatic' mode.

 

Here are a few links:

http://www.diannecraft.org/articles.htm

http://www.learning-aids.com/mixed-dominance-and-learning-disabilities

Edited September 3, 2012 by sherideane

[creekmom]

Assuming there isn't a vision/learning issue, I would try a different approach to handwriting. When you think about it, handwriting is a boring skill to learn. I bought a package of sticker stars at Walmart and told my children that I would put a star beside the letter (or word) that I thought was their best one on the workbook page - I would also give them a star to "award" to the one they thought was the best. Most times, the siblings also wanted to pick a "winner". This made it a little more fun, and I noticed they tried harder to form the letters correctly and neatly.

[Tanikit]

My DD turns 5 next week and I have found with her that doing anything thta requires writing with long gaps inbetween has helped as long as she is not writing more than one or two short sentences at a time during these sessions - if there is enough space between writing sessions she can write almost a paragraph a day and not be aware that she has done so much. She also finds writing just a single letter over and over very boring so if she does a letter incorrectly I make her write only 3 of that letter during a handwriting session at a different time of the day. Certain letters then never have to get practiced as she always gets them right and others get much more practice (p, b, d, g, f, j etc)

[pitterpatter]

As cute as ZB is, the slick pages drove us nuts. My DD always felt like her pencil was slipping across the page. Sadly, we dumped it.

 

http://bluehouseschool.blogspot.com/search/label/Zaner-Bloser

 

Here's a blog post I wrote about the struggles we've had with handwriting...just so you know that you're not alone. By the way, we had to abandon the little Scholastic books, etc. too that we were using. As it turns out, writing is much easier/better for DD when she writes smaller. Everything designed for her age uses HUGEly-spaced lines. Things have actually improved since I wrote that post. We are only doing structured handwriting twice a week this year. Her other handwriting will be the definitions, etc. she writes in history. I am making my own worksheets with Zaner-Bloser free Fonts Online program. We are using the line-spacing for grade 3. You can also make worksheets at http://www.worksheetworks.com/english/writing/handwriting.html.

[Hunter]

As cute as ZB is, the slick pages drove us nuts. My DD always felt like her pencil was slipping across the page. Sadly, we dumped it.

 

 

We don't like slick pages here either. We don't even like the paper that comes out of the printer. Pencil leads break more often, and crayon marks flake off.

[momsuz123]

Some other things we did to help with writing:

 

lots of playdough time, why not get those hands stronger?

 

writing on dry erase board

 

using cute little stickers for her to put between every word to help with spacing

 

I paid for subscriptiont to Right Start so I could make up fun, cute, sentences for my kids to write that pertained to them. For example, my older dd would rewrite a letter I wrote to her. My younger dd would rewrite words that meant something to her.

 

HTH:)

[Marie131]

We began WWE1 half way through first grade and it made a tremendous difference in my DS writing. He began using proper spacing, proper punctuation and using upper/lower case letters more appropriately and it is very gentle.

 

As for letter formation, we are using Penny Gardner's italics (I bought the download, it is ver inexpensive and is used for multi-grades!). Both of us are really enjoying the program. I only have him spend 3-5 minutes on it per day, but I require him to put in his best effort. Last year I had him complete a whole page of writing and would make him sit there until it was done no matter how long it took. I'm finding the shorter practice much better for him. I am getting far neater work w/ much less resistance.

[PeterPan]

Mixed dominance is not a problem. Our vision therapy place checks for it but leaves it alone. That alone should *not* cause a problem. My dd is mixed dominant btw. So is Tiger Woods. It actually has benefits, and NT can have it, no biggee.

 

Because the op's dc is 5, newly 6, she is PHYSICALLY, biologically, developmentally, a rising K5er. What I would do is go back and do all the things typical to a rising K5er. It doesn't matter a flying fig what her intellect is, if her physical reality is different. The norm for K5? Um, they need to color every day. They need to do things for fine motor every day. (tongs, unifix cubes, playdough, etc., get some books on it) They write a small amount, as in 5 letters on a page. By the end of the year maybe a short sentence or caption under a picture. That is a biologically, developmentally appropriate amount to expect. Brains doesn't change that.

 

Could extreme frustration at this stage be your early warning clues of a problem? Absolutely. My dd had 'em. She whined to high heaven in the early years, and it turned out she has low muscle tone and needed OT for fine motor, bilaterality issues, etc. etc. So yes you could be seeing something. Your ped can check for overall low muscle tone and clue you in on that. It's actually pretty easy to spot once you know what you're looking for. It's also good to check eyes, just to get 'em checked. I always recommend a developmental optometrist (which you find through COVD), not a regular one, because they check more. I had several regular optometrists MISS dd's problems before a developmental optometrist finally caught them. Wish that optometrist had caught them at age 5 and saved us some grief.

 

But no, in your shoes I would back off, do what is age-appropriate (not brain-appropriate) and see what happens. If there's still frustration and pain when she's doing age-typical activities or if she's shying away from fine motor or vision-dependent activities that are age-appropriate (puzzles, mazes, coloring, etc.), then I would get some evals done.

[kandty]

She is still young and her fine motor skills may not be ready for much writing. Work on activities to use her hands to gain strength. Writing may just hurt her hands at this age. Cut out all writing except for daily handwriting practice. Just require one "perfect" letter and stop. Add on how many letters you can get out of her, but no more than 5 minutes. Once you've gone through all the letters, try very short sentence. Best of luck! I think it will get better. Go easy, but don't give up.

[Targhee]

Your dd sounds like she is very bright working on second grade material! One thing to consider is that, even though she is bright, she may not be developmentally ready for second grade handwriting. My oldest is gifted, accelerated one grade, and her beautiful mind is able to do so much. However, her mind-to-hand (handwriting, and other writing in general) ability is actually behind her age level. We have recently discovered this is due to a few things, one of which is poor muscle strength in her hand grip and shoulders - her grip strength is three standard deviations below normal for her age! I never realized until the OT pointed out that she stabilizes herself with skeletal angles (locked arms and legs, resting on elbows, etc) rather than her muscles, and so handwriting has always been painful for her.

 

We have had success with a couple of things. First, I had to come to terms with the fact that my amazing child could actually be behind in something, and my expectations of her writing work weRe lowered. (I read something once about gifted kids and how we can expect input and processing will be higher but their production will not).

 

Next, we used handwriting without tears, even though I think it is ugly. Dd has had successes with it, which in turn builds her confidence, which in turn increases her motivation and ergo output.

 

Last, I make sure that I am only focusing on one thing when I ask her to write (spelling, or letter formation, or grammar, or content, or xyz). It isn't until she can do each of these well in isolation that she will be able to do all of them in the complex task of writing.

 

 

My biggest piece of advice is to be patient. All kids, and gifted especially, develop asynchronously. She may just need more time.