Is a handwriting curriculum necessary?

[TinyMama]

Hi! 👋 

I'm new to the forum but I have a 5 year old who is starting kindergarten this year. She can identify all capital and almost all lowercase letters. I personally find the idea of tracing letter pages tedious and she does too. Most handwriting curriculums that I have found implement a ton of tracing and copy work, but they are beneficial for correct letter formation. Are they really necessary? Letter formation is important, but is there other ways without purchasing curriculum?

I have been looking up some handwriting alternatives and I have come across some that are really fun. For example, one mama said she bought a joke book for her son and he would copy the jokes down. Right now, we are working on writing a very short book (complete with illustrations!) we also have been using multi-sensory methods. 

I'm very new to homeschooling so I would love all the advice! 

Thank you, 

TinyMama

[Clemsondana]

We used Handwriting Without Tears, which didn't take a lot of time or have a lot of copywork.  Having spent time volunteering with kids who go to schools where they don't teach handwriting, I've found that kids who aren't given instruction on pencil grip and letter formation tend to not write very fluently.  Instead of automatically forming letters without much thought as they get older, they are sometimes still 'making a drawing' for each letter when they write.  I didn't have my kids do much writing of any kind until they had finished letters in the K handwriting workbook.  We then skipped to the end and did numbers so that they could write their own math, and then we went back and did the practice.  I don't remember the process of learning to write, so it was fascinating for me to watch kids who are assigned writing without instruction on how to make the letters.  There tended to be more reversals and it was often slow as they saw the letters as a series of lines or circles to replicate rather than having a set motion for making each letter.  

[TinyMama]

@Clemsondana

I may have worded that incorrectly. She can write any letter I ask of her. I'm just not sure if it matters at 5 that her lower case o's are a little bigger than they should be or her lowercase letters very in size in a single word. Her writing is the necessarily sloppy but it definitely screams "I just turned 5 and I'm still learning"

Does handwriting curriculum help with letter sizing also? How important is correct letter size at 5? I feel like they write everything bigger at this age anyway. Is she has a correct pencil grip and correct understanding of letter formation, but it's definitely child like and all over the place on the page. 

[HomeAgain]

We did not use a handwriting curriculum.  I used my own method to introduce letters and continue the lessons.

1. I made a list of letters and broke them down by strokes used.  Then I organized them into groups. I started with the simplest (top to bottom vertical stroke) and continued on from there.  So our first 3 letters were l, i, and t.   Then I added the "c" group: c, d, e, o, a.  So on and so forth (rainbow group, j group...)until we got to the ones that just didn't fit well (like z).  I did have SchoolRite templates that could be used in a pinch(and I've used them with many other kids who struggle with formation/size because they fit on Kindergarten lined paper) but they're often more of a guide or memory aid.

2. Each new lesson started with talking out specifics of the form: where do I start, where do I stop, what am I looking for in shape...I'd make one, talking it out, and then he'd make one, talking it out. Then he'd make 3, talking each one out, and at the end, he'd circle the best one.  After the second letter we could also start working on writing words using what had been taught: ill, then lit, till for the 3rd lesson, then tic, dill, tile, lite..  Same thing: make one word, analyze it, make another, analyze it, make a third, analyze it, then circle the best word and be done for the day.  So the most a kid would do in the first few weeks is 3 individual letters and 3 words.

3. As we got further in, it was time for short, short copywork where the words would be written out to copy and work on matching, but the 5th day would be writing the sentence from memory. 

4. When we did add a handwriting curriculum, it was one I had used as a kid that yes, has those handwriting lines, but also several creative activities.  I can't find them anymore in their old form or I'd link them, but we didn't find it useful until around grade 2 or 3.

My kid wrote passably well until Covid/age 12, when a combination of brain fog and puberty made a lot of things difficult for him.  He ended up substituting some letter/number shapes he had known well for..new ones?  So now he practices handwriting with disappearing ink grooved books.  He's redeveloping the muscle memory he struggled with for a while. 

[ScoutTN]

Well, penmanship instruction is necessary and a handwriting curriculum is an easy way to do that. Correct grip and letter formation matter. Handwriting curriculum helps with sizing and spacing. It is not overly time consuming nor expensive. 

Copywork for older students can have many purposes and can be valuable.

I have two lefties and we used HWT and the New American Cursive. 

Edited May 14 by ScoutTN

[ieta_cassiopeia]

Does your 5-year-old have access to specialised handwriting paper (either bought or printed)? There are types of paper with guide lines at certain levels. If you provide some, you can ask her to make the tops of rounded letters such as o touch the  dotted line across the centre.

Combine this with continuing your practise of copying good and interesting sentences, paragraphs, (short) books, whether you choose to add a writing curriculum or not.

Edited May 14 by ieta_cassiopeia

[Clarita]

I still have the handwriting workbooks/curriculums. When my son began to read fluently I began to move away from the handwriting workbook to copy work. I write these out by hand neatly, occasionally I let him see me copying out his copy work. The specialized writing paper doesn't jive well with my children (I don't doubt that the guided paper is great but my children write better without the guides). So with that I also will say observe your child and do what is right for your child. 

My little girl on the other hand would likely stick with the handwriting workbook, because "fancy" handwriting is something she wants to work on. Plus she isn't fluent in reading so copy work doesn't have a ton of added benefit. She wants to do the many letter page because she actively works on learning how to make the letters beautiful. She'll ask me to demonstrate the strokes and the letter formation during her handwriting work. My son only does what I require of him (which is legible). 

A note on copy work. Copy work can be more than just handwriting practice. I tend to be a bit intentional about it. So I will point out spelling and grammatical/conventions with the copy work. I also make copy work out of their narrations (their own words just edited to be grammatically and conventionally correct). Occasionally I talk with them about the changes I'm making like "I want to use the word ran here instead of runned because ran is the word for running in the past."

[Clemsondana]

We never did copy work.  But, in the early years my kids did very little writing at all.  We did paragraph writing and such at a later age because the act of having to write it down slowed their learning so much that I decided that it wasn't worth it.  We did a lot orally.  The writing that they did was their own work, though, instead of copywork.  I understand the purpose and benefits, but it didn't fit with our needs.  

It's normal for a K kid to have irregularly sized letters and not have them lined up properly on the lines.  My kids found it really helpful to use the paper lined and spaced for young kids - the HWoT paper is slightly different than regular school paper with the dotted line in showing where the tops of the lower case letters go - but anything like that is fine.  The paper changes after a few years and the spacing becomes smaller so that they are trending towards notebook paper by the time they finish elementary school.  

If you are comfortable that your child forms the letters correctly and the same way every time, always starting in the same position (for b, it isn't a stick and then a circle one time and a circle and then a stick the next) and doesn't have reversals then there's no requirement that they do handwriting.  We chose to do print practice from K-2 and then learn cursive in 3-4.  We spent maybe 10 minutes/day on it, if that, and were done with the book shortly after Christmas each year after doing it 3 days/week.  For us it was time well spent and fit with my desire to not let any frustration or challenges with the act of writing get mixed in with subject learning.  For others it would be a waste of time - their kid may be a great writer naturally, or enjoy it so that there isn't any frustration.  It's kind of like spelling. Some families continue to work on spelling into middle school.  With one of my kids, I rarely used a proper spelling curriculum, and when I did it was to teach other skills like alphabetization.  With the other, we needed more practice.  We can tell you pitfalls of not being taught to write or offer various ways to teach or practice handwriting, but there's no way to know if a program would add benefit.  

[EKS]

I'd enforce handwriting practice for five minutes per day.  There is a lot in school (and life) that is tedious, and requiring five minutes of tedium isn't going to hurt anyone (and will likely make them stronger).

What I mean by handwriting practice is a time where she practices writing letters properly--formation, sizing, etc--on specially lined paper (we liked the HWT paper).  So if you use a homegrown program, you'll need to educate yourself on what is important for kids to internalize about handwriting.

Copy work isn't a terrible thing, once kids have the basics down.  I found that pulling a sentence from their dictated work (so narrations that they did orally and I wrote down) made them have more ownership of the process.  We gradually increased the number of sentences copied each day.  Note that adults also do what amounts to copy work when they want to make a clean, handwritten copy of something.

FWIW, I'm not a fan of WTM style copy work and dictation.

[ScoutTN]

I liked having different handwriting papers as my kids matured, growing them into regular lined notebook paper over time. We just printed what I wanted at home. Many curricula come with downloadable paper templates.

[EKS]

14 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:

I liked having different handwriting papers as my kids matured, growing them into regular lined notebook paper over time.

This is something I liked about HWT.  They had I think three different sizes.  That said, the jump to regular notebook paper was still a big one.  But it's been many years since I dealt with this, so maybe there is a better transitional paper now.

[Penderwink]

I’m someone else who has been impressed with HWT for a kid who would struggle with lengthy tracing letter pages.

 

[Clarita]

I'm also a fan of Handwriting Without Tears. That's the one I used for my son to get him to legible. His handwriting is not beautiful but legible.

[Annsaya]

Hi. I am trying to find handwriting curriculum for the children of my boss. He wants me to find pdf books for the complete handwriting curriculum.  If you guys have or know where I can buy them, please let me know. We are eyeing zaner-bloser handwriting practice masters or McGraw Hill Handwriting but it seems that there are no ebooks or pdf books. We won't be needing physical books as we are outside US. 

 

Checking the convo above, it seems that most of you guys are using handwriting without tears. And, i believe they have books, am i correct? Can you guys tell me how much do they charge for this curriculum and if they are providing ebook or pdf book. TIA

Edited August 27 by Annsaya

[Clarita]

On 8/27/2024 at 4:36 AM, Annsaya said:

Checking the convo above, it seems that most of you guys are using handwriting without tears. And, i believe they have books, am i correct? Can you guys tell me how much do they charge for this curriculum and if they are providing ebook or pdf book. TIA

I don't see handwriting without tears pdf or ebook. I used their physical books.

Here's a sort of how to do it on your own for free.http://donpotter.net/pdf/shortcut_to_manuscript.pdf Then you can just write stuff out on your own instead of getting workbooks.