Teaching Handwriting

I sat out this year to teach Selena how to write without a curriculum. At first Selena was very leery of trying, but I reinforced that it didn’t matter how it looked, I was just looking for her to try. Already knowing that Selena knew how to make most of her letters, it really was more of a building the self confidence, get the letters down on the paper, then refine it from there.

You will need to click on the images to really see her handwriting. This first one is the very first attempt this year at writing anything. You can see which letters she had a firm foundation for and which ones she really needed to work on. We continued this model through the first few months. Until finally her handwriting began to take on more precision on it’s own just from practicing daily.

As you can hopefully see by clicking on the above image that indeed her letters began to take form, though she struggled with placement on the lined paper. I bit my tongue many times at this point. I knew I had two ways to go at this point, continue to just let her build her confidence or try to force the issue to improve her letter placement. I chose to just let her continue to build her confidence.

 

We have now started to work on proper placement of her letters within the lines. The easiest way I have found to do this is to make our white board into lined paper. As Selena reads her school work, and selects the correct word, I write it on the whiteboard the way it should look on her page. She then using mine as an example writes the words on her page. We are using the same approach with learning to write numbers.

If you are like us and are struggling to find a handwriting curriculum that fits your child, don’t sweat it. You have the ability to teach your child how to write without one. You know how to write, so give it some time, wait until your child is ready then just let them explore. Stay relaxed, there is plenty of time for her to improve and perfect her writing skill. I am very proud of how hard Selena has worked, and how far she has come.