Ok, I am not loving Handwriting Without Tears for my dd. She is 5 and not responding very well to it. I have actually seen a bit of regression. I have looked at A Reason for Handwriting and a few other but I don't think I want to go with those either. Anyone use something else they loved or something free online? I would love any advice!
I know you said you do not want to do A Reason for Handwriting but I have to say I love that program. Dd has done so well with it. If you want to print off something on line, have you checked out Donna Young's site? I know she has printable handwriting sheets.
LOL. I was just looking at Donna Young's site! Can I ask what you like about A Reason for Handwriting? If it will work I will be willing to switch to it. My biggest thing is not wanting to spend more money for something else that doesn't work.
http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/ What I usually do is just buy penmanship paper and I write out what they are to write. For my 5 year old I'll also write it once in yellow marker so he can trace over it then write it on his own. For things they might need to practice often (like name, address, phone number, etc) I print out a sheet from the above link and laminate it so it saves paper-they use dry erase crayon on those. The dry erase crayons comes off easier than marker plus the 'pull' of the crayon on the 'paper' is better than the 'glide' of a marker for kids learning to write.
I have a handwriting book that I will be happy to send to you, if you want it. I can't think of the name of it and can't get it write now, but will get back to with that info. Anyway, it is new but missing the first two pages. Let me know if you want to look for and give you the name.
It's possible that at 5, her fine motor skills just aren't as ready to do handwriting as some 5 year olds are. I say let her print on paper without lines for awhile, never mind the size. Have her do her writing practice on a clean countertop or a cookie sheet with shaving cream or soapsuds, or pudding, yogurt, etc. Fingerpainting. Outdoors with sidewalk chalk. Or indoors with a chalk board and/or white markerboard. Let her form letters with ropes of clay or playdoh. Make "sewing cards" of letter shapes out of cardstock she can lace with yarn, narrow ribbon, or long shoelaces. There are markers/crayons that are made for writing on bathtub walls (and yourself!). Let her use large paper (the classified ads pages of a newspaper work well) taped to a wall (be careful of wallpaper and painted surfaces) to write on with fat crayons and markers. That said, I like very much a series called Pentime, which is available at Rainbow Resource. I also like a workbook called I Can Write Manuscript, which I'm sure RR also has. If not, Christian Light has it. For that age, I also like the wipe-off books available at WalMart for learning to print.
With 3 kids, I've tried just about everything- Handwriting Without Tears, printed online worksheets, McRuffy printing books, cheapie manuscript books from Walmart, etc. By the time i got to my last child, I got sheets (either purchased or online printed) of each letter, then I used a highlighter to make practice letters and words for her to copy over. Then I gave her a spiral notebook with a verse or saying printed by me for her to copy below. Now her printing is beautiful (age 7).
We started with book A. I really liked the fact that we practiced one letter and then words with that letter. Dd did not get bored just practicing a letter at a time. It is also broken up into managabe chunks for each day. The three line approach also made alot more sense to dd. It gave her a good visualization of how to write the word. The border sheets have also been a tremendous motivation for dd. She will color them and we will display them for a week. Since it was going up where folks could see it she wanted to do a nice job. Every year I see an improvement so I keep using it.
Thank you all for the great ideas! I'm going to stop stressing over this. I think I will do some of the fun activities Lindina mentioned and just do some printed sheets, etc. I will see how it works for awhile. Mschickie, this is my main problem with HWOT. They don't use the three line approach. It is very confusing to dd because everything else that she has done has been with three.
I think in addition to the fun activities I will try this too. That's pretty much what I did last year and she was making progress. HWOT set her back. Thanks!
Dd went to ps for k and they used HWOT. I told her teacher that we would be using the 3 line approach at home. Luckily her teacher was ok with that otherwise we would have pulled her right then. Dd could not stand the handwriting they did in school. When we started A Reason for Handwriting the following year her handwriting really started improving.
