My daughter is in first grade going on second in a few weeks and her handwriting is messy. We have handwriting every day and she writes perfect on kindergarten paper but on regular paper it is a mess. Any suggestions on how we can clean it up?
Lots of practice! In fact, practice on regular lined paper and use a yellow marker or highlighter to print the sentence or word and have her write right over it. Then have her write below it. It just takes a lot of patience and time to perfect. If I remember correctly, my oldest daughter's printing took a while to improve. By about middle of 4th grade, it looked 'right'.
I can't recommend Handwritting without Tears highly enough!! My son who is in Grade 1 has great handwriting from using this program. I think his handwriting is better than my husbands. In Australia we have a Ed Moderator come to visit who are sent by the government to check on our progress as Home Educators and to ensure that we are covering the curriculum set by the gov. Even he was amazed at the neatness of my sons handwriting. My Daughter who is 4.5yrs has also started HWT and not only does she love it but it is also having the same effect on her neatness. HWT is a guaranteed resource in our Home Edding and I don't even bother about the price as long as we can keep getting it from the US. We buy the workbooks, the playdoe and templetes that go with and also the blackboard with the two lines. We didn't worry about Matman or the wooden letter pieces. Wish you all the best with daughters journey . . .
Practice and learning to hold the pencil with a good grip. I find the kids handwriting has been improving the more I ask them to one use the tripod grip and two write words from the top down. Yes that means relearning what they have been doing and it isn't always easy. But it's worth the effort
One of my major concerns next year. I'm reading up the Spalding Method right now. (Not sure I going to use it, but it is an interesting read.) I saw that Rainbow Resources had different lined paper at very affordable prices if you want something between the K paper and the regular notebook paper. We will be doing dictation next year for sure.
My DD (4th grade) STILL has awful handwriting. My goal for summer break is to get it to a point where it is somewhat legible. She writes almost exactly like my DH and it drives me CRAZY!!! We're looking into lots of copywork, etc.for summer,but she doesn't know that yet
I am looking into pentime from rainbow resource. It has been highly recommend to me. Because my almost 4th grader is horrible. And it is cheap.
