I'm trying to work on DS handwriting. It's so bad, that it's practically illegible. I bought some handwriting paper, and I'm just starting him on lower case a. I showed him how to make the a properly, while chanting "around-up-down". I was hoping he would get a rhythm to writing the letter. He hates it, and it was turning into a fight. He doesn't like to be corrected, and he keeps giving excuses as to why something was wrong. I had to give him a huge lecture, which left me breathless, as I am now 9 months pregnant! Anyway, he did calm down though, and his a's are actually starting to look like a's instead of an oi. /rant over!
I had printed up some handwriting worksheets I had found online, but those weren't working at all, so now it's just me showing him, and him filling up a sheet of paper with a letter. I think he was also upset that I rearranged his schedule a little bit. We were doing reading comprehension 3x a week, and he was expecting that after his spelling class. But I switched his reading comp slot to the handwriting slot, and reading comp will only be 2x a week now...
My son just turned 8 and he hates handwriting. I was trying to have him do a page a day, but it wasn't worth the battle. I'm going to switch to 2-3 times a week, but expect better quality work.
How old is he? If he's less than 9 or so I wouldn't push him too much on it yet. He has plenty of time to learn better handwriting and you don't want to make him hate it this young. I know my son (almost 8) really doesn't like hw too much, either, and he has quite messy writing even when he's trying hard. We do hw 2-3 times a week now, with most of it being short creative writing... only a few sentences at at a time. I would try to ease up and let it be fun for him if he's young.
Since we don't know the age of your son it's hard to say. However my DS also had this issue and still occasionally does if he rushes. Now that said I did this trick after many rants/lectures/talks about writing. I let him write it his way, then the next day I asked him to read me his work. He couldn't, I said, well now can you see that if someone were to want to read your work and they can't why it is a problem. If all the people of the world shared your view on writing there would be nothing to read and ultimately not much to learn. And to take it evener farther life would be quite different. Then I would tell him that school work is special and I require him to try his very best. That yes I knew what he was writing and he knew what he was writing but what a huge waste of our time if we couldn't go back to read it later. I think the message was recieved as he does TRY now. His writing improved greatly. I do gently remind him if I see he is starting from the bottom or using the incorrect hand grip. I also find his writing is better with the paper with the center line still as a guide. However we do write on most any paper for practice. It comes with practice like all good things do. Patience and remember he will get it. And for pete's sake don't stress over it too much at nine months!
Depending on his age, it can take months to years for a child to get the hang of cursive. No child will be able to do it exactly right or even remember how to do it right away. I do not know how long your child has been working on it. Not only does the brain have to retain the information, but your child's motor skills need to be worked on in the process. He is developing two skills at once. You can correct your child until you are blue in the face and if he isn't ready yet, he will still struggle and come to hate cursive. In fact, most cursive curriculum from publishers like A Beka work on curriculum from K-6th grade because it isn't something that children just get and should know through correction. Some children do not pick it up for years. Again, we do not know your son's age, but it sounds like he isn't trying to battle you as much as he isn't ready.
Also, I was going to say that with Will I started out getting him to write lists.... grocery lists as I called out/spelled what I needed, toy lists of things he may want for his birthday or Christmas, even a list of people we knew, animals he liked, things like that. Since he was interested in those things, he wrote with much less griping and it made for a smoother lesson without him even realizing it.
When dgs was 4-turning-5 I tried teaching him some few letters and his name. When he soooooooo didn't want to write on a whole sheet of "kindergarten paper" (the horizontal paper with large writing spaces), I folded it in half (left to right) and had him write on just half of the paper. He was waaaaaay more amenable to writing when he could see that he only had to write (trace one, write 3 or 4) a few!
My ds is 13 and still struggles with this. I have a HUGE post on my familyd.50megs.com blog about it - it's under more articles and info. There could be more going on than you realize. Good luck.
I have always been under the impression that handwriting and cursive were one in the same. So let me see if I am getting this correct, he is working on printing?
What was recommended to me was to have my son do smaller amounts of handwriting practice per day, but to stress that he do his very best. Then I go back over it when he's done and point out what he did well and point out what needs more work. Then I pick a few of the worst errors and have him correct them. That way it doesn't feel overwhelming to him. He still doesn't like handwriting practice, but he does it and is very slowly improving. I use an online worksheet maker so he can see how the letters are supposed to be writen above his own writing. Just my 2 cents.
Have you had him checked to make sure he doesn't need any kind of therapy? A friend of mine has a son that ended up doing occ. therapy for quite a while... they found out he needed it when it came time to do handwriting. Just a thought.
I found out with ds (many many moons ago) that he responded better when I'd pick out the best example of each letter or word and put a teensy checkmark next to it, rather than marking the worst errors in red. Then (after so long a time) I'd have him put a mark next to the one HE thought was best before I looked at it, and see if we agreed or not.
