Zachary has never liked handwriting or any kind of assignment that required him to pick up a pen or pencil and write letters onto a piece of paper. I've gone through several lines of reasoning for this and usually come back to the fact that he's just like his dad, whose handwriting is completely illegible.
But, being one to never give up....I keep trying to improve the hand writing. I am a big believer in teaching him to type, which we are working on, but his typing isn't fast enough yet to be efficient. In addition to knowing how to type, I also think it's important to have the ability to write legibly in both cursive and printing. Not that I'm looking for perfection (I have to remind myself of that everyday!!), but I do think it is important for him to be able to put his thoughts on paper in a reasonably fluid and timely manner.
Practice, Practice, Practice seems like the best method to make this seemingly torturous chore come more naturally. In the past years we skipped over a lot of the copy work that past curriculum have required - he just didn't seem physically ready to do so much writing. Now I wonder if I should have forced this practice in order to exercise those fine muscles. Should've, Would've, Could've....right?
Well, this year we have been using IEW's SWI-A (for more information on this check out this past post) and it requires a decent amount of writing by hand; copying what Andrew writes on the white board during the video lessons, writing key word outlines, writing rough drafts, and rewriting a final draft. For my dear son, that is a lot of writing!!
So what is the simple thing I found that has helped so much?
A better paper. I told you it was simple, but it has made a big difference to Zac. I think when we started using the standard wide-ruled paper, it was too big of a jump from ruled handwriting paper, the kind with the dashed middle guide line.
I went to DonnaYoung.org (my favorite site for any free printables) and found out that she has a lined vertical handwriting paper called C1. The guidelines are still there, but the lines are much closer together. To him, it is not "kindergarten paper", but I think the guidelines make him feel more comfortable than the "naked" wide ruled paper. Since the lines are closer together it isn't as cumbersome for him to try to form the letters quicker. The paper is positioned vertically so that you can 3-hole punch the side and put it into any binder. I thought, "Why not...let's give it a try."
All of a sudden, Zac could write faster because the guidelines forced him to write smaller, and it was much neater, which surprisingly, was a really exciting thing for him. He kept calling me into the room where he was working to get me to just look at his work. He was really proud of how it looked! He actually asked me to print out more paper and put it into all of his notebooks, so that he could use it instead of the regular wide-ruled paper.
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| From Draw Write Now Book 3 - The Mayflower |
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| Happy to have his guidelines back, Zachary had no complaints about doing his writing assignment today. |
Now, obviously, this isn't a miracle-working cure that will make all complaining go away forever, but it did make a big difference to Zachary and that makes me happy!
~Vicki ~
3 comments:
That's very neat writing! I'm going to give that paper a try with Hannah!
Susie, I know all little ones are very different, but if you are like me, anything is worth a try if you think it might help a little. I hope Hannah likes it as well as Zac.
Oh my gosh! His handwriting (print) is amazing compared to my dear daughter. She, as you know, is - um - sixteen. Wish I'd done more handwriting practice with her when she was Zachary's age!
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