My daughter is starting second grade next year and is still in need of handwriting help. I have made up a book of printable sheets and put them in page protectors and we work on the book for 20+ minutes everyday. I'm concerned about her habit of starting at the bottom of the letter to make it instead of the top. Is this really a big deal? Also, what else can we be doing to work on this?
I always insist that my students start at the top and make the strokes in the proper order. The student's insistence on doing otherwise notwithstanding. At her age it's not really that big a deal, it's just something that ought to be corrected now while she's young. I really like the Pentime handwriting books - you can find them at RainbowResourceCenter or at CLE www.clp.org.
My son does this also. He is also left handed. I figure if his handwriting is neat and I am able to read it. Then I am not going to complain. It is just not something I am going to make a huge deal out of. Not everyone writes the same, so why stress if my child is a bit different. There are way more things in the future of all this (hsling) that I know will be more worth stressing over. Then worrying that he starts his letters at the bottom.
My thoughts exactly. I also have a left-hander (two of them actually, go figure, since my husband and I are both righties). My focus is on getting him to write neatly. You might make suggestions about how she is making her letters, and if she is able to do it more neatly the way you suggest, then have her do it that way, but if it is a letter she is doing well on, then just leave it alone. Well, that is just IMHO. Good luck!
My son does this too. At first I couldn't figure out why it mattered where he started his letters, from top or bottom. But someone did tell me that learning to write letters from the top made the transition to cursive writing easier. So now I gently remind him to start letters from the top when we are doing handwriting. I don't know if it will make a difference or not...cursive is a couple years off for us!
Left or right handed, I think that if their writing is ledgeable, I'm not going to make a fuss over something so personal. I can tell you for a fact I don't write anything like I was taught in school, I write in my own style and eventually no matter how you make them write to start out they will get their own as well. How do you think they can use handwriting analysis?
I tell my students like I used to tell my karate students: everyone develops their own "style" of doing the techniques, according to their body type and natural talents. But the rule is, first you do it my way, then after you make black belt you can interpret it any way you want. I strongly suggest that you train your child (gently) to start at the tops and go around circles the correct way WHILE LEARNING. There's something neurologically developmental (don't ask me what, I'm not a neurologist!) about learning handwriting "the correct way". When I was a school social worker working with the multidisciplinary team, just about every kid I was asked to evaluate in primary school wrote "the wrong way" (bottom to top, crossing ts right to left, making circles the wrong direction...). That wasn't why they were referred, but rather was something I discovered as I was working with them. When we were taught to do a dyslexia screening test, that was one of the things we were supposed to be alert to. ETA: Lots of tracing with you watching and encouraging seems to be the most corrective method.
A friend impressed upon me to get them to do it right first time as when her daugher eventually wanted to start doing joined up writing aged about 9 it was impossible and she had to start to teach her all over again on how to form the letters and felt that this was a lot of time wasted at the beginning. So I guess the moral is make it a habbit from the off set. With this advice I am hard on my girls if I see them doing it wrong and make them correct it. However, if I don't see what they do I can not do anything about it.
Our son needed a lot of help with handwriting because it was so overwhelming to him that he could not think and write at the same time. I looked at HWOT but I really just do not like it. I ended up finding a program that is not well known in homeschooling circles but it is used by occupational therapists to help dysgraphic kids. It is called First Strokes Handwriting. It was not expensive and is easy to do. It organizes the letters by the first stroke you make for it. His grip was very tense and he could not make a smooth couunterclockwise circle for the circle stroke letters. I spent a month with him doing nothing but making big counterclockwise circles with paintbrushes, starting big and getting smaller and smaller. Then he graduated to dry erase markers on plastic and finally to a pencil. Focusing on the first stroke in each letter has also helped his reversal issues because you really cannot reverse if you do the strokes in the right order and circles are always counterclockwise. I only bought a couple of workbooks, not the video.
When I taught my older two, I really didn't know I was doing it wrong (in not correcting them). Both of them learned cursive fine. My oldest has fixed herself when forming manuscript and now does them the correct way without me teaching her. My middle does a combination sometimes correct, sometimes wrong. But his cursive is a sight to see, it's beautiful when he takes his time! I'm trying to gently correct my youngest, but, she's determined! She lives in her own little world where she is the center and everything she does is correct. LOL But she's learning. I do try to correct her when I see it happening. My evaluator (who was a teacher) said as long as she was reading okay that it was okay if she didn't form them the appropriate way. I'm guessing she knew about the neurological connection? Now, I'm not saying my youngest is gifted or anything. BUT our evaluator said that she is scary smart, and her brain works differently than most because of how it retains information (we call her "the elephant" because of her memory - she has memories from when she was a baby and can recall them with crystal clarity). Anyway, we use A Reason for Handwriting. AND copywork. Also, for my youngest, she has an "All About Me" book where I write a sentence lightly in pencil. She draws a picture int he blank space, and then traces the writing. Thankfully , God has protected my children from my early mistakes! None are dyslexic...and had I known the connection, I think I would have been more diligent. I do think that I'm more in the "as long as I can read it camp" BUT I can see why that might not be the best thing!
