Improving penmanship for older kids

[Karri]

My 13yo ds has horrible penmanship. He finished the last book of the italic handwriting series about 1-1/2 years ago and I haven't done any formal penmanship with him since. I hadn't been really worried about his handwriting because my own handwriting was really bad when I was his age. My penmanship improved when I was about 15 or so and I developed my own style of writing. However, I'm now concerned that ds may not outgrow this messy stage without some intervention. I make him re-do anything that is illegible, but his overall handwriting is still sloppy.

Anyone else had this problem? What helped your kids improve their penmanship?

Thanks,
Karri

[Michelle in MO]

called Self-Instruction for Middle School.

You might also check into Educational Fontware. I don't have the website offhand, but it's a computer program that has almost any font (including Italic) on the CD-ROM. It loads into your computer hard drive, and from there you can make up your own worksheets for copywork. I use it with my youngest, for her spelling lists, since she seems to need both auditory and visual reinforcement for her spelling words. You could use it to make really any kind of worksheet you would need. Do a Google search for Educational Fontware and it should bring you right to their website.

For my middle daughter, I've threatened her with Spencerian Penmanship (published by Mott Media, I believe) if she doesn't improve her penmanship! Sometimes I wish I had done that with all three girls. I believe it was used in US public schools back in the 1800's and early 1900's, and it is literally "line upon line, precept upon precept" with the strokes of cursive writing. It will have the child do pages of each type of stroke, gradually putting the strokes and letters together. I've heard that parents (or grandparents) who took Spencerian Penmanship during their education usually ended up with excellent handwriting.

HTH! My recommendation would be for the Educational Fontware, though.

[Moira in MA]

Why not redo the last book in the Italics series for relaxation during one of the high school years. It is complete in itself and helped me inprove my own dreadful hand.

My youngest dd will do this, probably as a sophomore or junior.

HTH

[MaryM]

I was in the same place with my son and made a conscious decision to work on penmanship fearing how he would fare on standardized tests! Personally, I always felt that typing would be a much more useful skill and he types much faster than he can write but I was compelled to make him write better!

Well, along comes the fact that he is taking an AP Biology exam long before his handwriting improves. Reading WTM posts about kids who did pretty well w/o great handwriting gave me hope:rolleyes: I think it was GwenVa who wrote a post about this last year. Anyway, long story short, he got a great score on that exam despite his horrible handwriting and after that I abandoned my effort to improve handwriting. I feel there are many more fun and educational things I can spend that time on and it was a battle that I was willing to loose, if you know what I mean?

Beautiful handwriting is an art and I do appreciate it! It's not my ds though. That will just have to be an area that isn't his strongpoint and I hope and pray he gets readers on thee exams in the future who are as talented in deciphering his handwriting!!

That's my story....

Mary

[Mom to Many]

My 13yo ds has horrible penmanship. He finished the last book of the italic handwriting series about 1-1/2 years ago...

Karri, it's the Italics, probably. I love the print Italics, but the cursive Italics, in many cases, results in sloppy handwriting once children get older and speed up with their handwriting. I'm sure there are exceptions, but in every case I've seen, teens who learned Italic cursive had sloppy handwriting, and it's because it's not a continuous-stroke script (writers must pick up the pencil when connecting several letters).

I highly recommend that you reteach your ds cursive via a continous stroke script like Zaner-Bloser (the more current version without excessive loops). You can get a font program like mentioned before, or possibly find worksheets online. You'll notice a vast improvement in his handwriting speed and neatness once he gets used to the new style.

Mom to Many

[Lizzie in Ma]

form homeschool estore. It is meant for young boys but my dd, who would really like to improve her penmanship was amused and happy to do a page a day. http://www.homeschoolestore.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=penmanship&x=0&y=0&search_in_description=1&search_in_author=1&search_in_artist=1&search_in_editor=1

[Kendall]

My older 2 do not have stellar handwriting. We used italic. The problem wasn't wholly the italic. I didn't do anything more than tell them to do x number of lines in the italic book. With my 3rd son I researched, asked questions, and examined a friend's nice handwriting. I will list the changes I made when we got to cursive with my 3rd son(5th grade now). So far so good.

But first, I looked at the worst letters/joins of my 2 oldest and taught them the more traditional cursive for those letters (I think it was r and f and maybe another letter for one of the boys). This helped improved legibility. To improve their handwriting further I plan to do a handwriting boot camp where they daily do copywork. It might have to be this summer.

With the younger son I have had him practice the joins but the ones he isn't comfortable with and doesn't do well (r particularly) I let him lift and start again rather than connecting to the previous letter. When I looked at my friend's beautiful handwriting I noticed that it is not a pure connected cursive. There are lifts. The key is making the space between the two letters small so that it doesn't look like another word. I also have been VERY religious about having this son do daily copywork. His handwriting is quite neat so far.

FWIW

[Gwen in VA]

like MaryM said, my son has HORRIBLE handwriting. I kept on telling him to work on it (I did provide him with sheets and copy pages), but handwriting was on the absolute BOTTOM of his list of priorities.

Fast forward to 11th grade -- I don't know how the College Board trains its readers, but somehow ds took multiple AP exams (obviously with written portions) and the SAT and did really well on them all, despite the fact that even I, his loving mother, cannot read his handwriting at times. Either the CB readers can deal with illegible handwriting much better than I can, or they just give high scores to illegible exams. I don't know which! :)


His handwriting is still pretty illegible, though it has improved VERY slightly over the past year. I think filling out all those college forms may have helped it! :rolleyes:

Moral of the story -- by all means try to have your son improve his handwriting, but if it means nagging or fighting it isn't worth the struggle. Point out to your son WHY handwriting is important (it is a form of communication, after all) and trust that those CB readers can deal with it.