Making Handwriting Fun

Making Handwriting Fun!

Handwriting

Handwriting is the ability to efficiently produce written communication.

As children grow older, their handwriting skills develop in the following ways.

Handwriting Samples

Parents may apply the HOW acronym as a guide to develop your child’s handwriting skills.

Incorporate fun into the learning process to increase your child’s motivation!

Direct instructions on how to write the letter will help your child remember better.

• Demonstrate and describe how to form the letter.
  
  
• Provide multisensory input (i.e., hear, say, see and feel the movement of the letters).
• Provide gradual practice. Start with tracing, then move to copying and eventually writing from memory.
  

Give feedback and tell your child what he/she is writing well.

• Be positive and specific.
  
  
• Celebrate progress using charts, graphs, praise and rewards. Paste your child’s best handwriting piece on the wall.
  

Encourage self-evaluation to help your child take ownership over their writing.

• Ask your child to identify what they did well and what can be improved on.
  
  
• Make deliberate mistakes in a sample for your child to correct.

Practice makes perfect!

• Schedule frequent, distributed and short blocks of handwriting practice (approximately 15 minutes/day).

Scan here for reproducible activities!