Handwriting and Penmanship - Do you teach it? How?

Question

I have a child with dyslexia and issues with motor skills. Her handwriting is horrid. I've tried and use various tools to help. She has more of an interest in cursive, so we're working on that for now, which seems to be a bit better. She still doesn't use proper letter size, proper spacing, etc. - and nothing is ever consistent. Most letters and numbers are written how she's comfortable in an odd order. Does anyone have any helpful hints, or aids besides pencil grips, foot rests, table height, finger/hand exercises and warm ups, color lined paper, etc? We've worked with OTs in the past, and that wasn't enough help IMO.

Answer 1

I would look into Handwriting Without Tears, unless one of your OT's has already tried it and failed.  It was written by an OT for her son, and we've used it for five years and love it.

http://www.hwtears.com

Answer 2

How old is she?

For m 10yo dyslexic son, we've pretty much let it go for the past couple of years - we've worked with the mental process behind writing instead.  Now, at 10, we're picking it back up, and he's excited.  We'll be using BJU 6th Grade Handwriting (his pick) because of the short and interesting lessons and the integration of calligraphy at the end of each unit.

For him, it was really more of letting his developmental ability catch up with his academic ability.  Handwriting used to produce tears, now it produces, "oh, cool!".  She may just need a year or two to "grow into" her developmental ability before all of the handwriting instruction makes sense - it really is more muscle memory than anything else, and if that's not there, all she's going to achieve is a sense of frustration.

Answer 3

It would surely be more useful to concentrate on computer skills - touch typing, and also speech recognition software.  Handwriting is a skill that's hardly needed any more - schools still teach it, since students have to write in classrooms, but it's not necessary in home education.  Adults don't need to write anything much, other than the occasional signature - so why worry?  someone with dyslexia is never going to find it easier, and your daughter will be able to communicate much better with a computer.

Incidentally, neither of my sons have dyslexia but I home educated them for nine years and we never bothered with handwriting or penmanship.   They are both very computer literate, and fast typers... and they both managed to develop their own kind of handwriting style in their mid-teens when they wanted to make notes with a pen.   Mostly they write on the computer, though.

Answer 4

For cursive we are using "A Reason for Handwriting" book C. Its Bible based in that the exersizes a scripture. It looks pretty as my daughter pratices and she tries very hard to make it look the same. I don't think that is the most important thing but she does.

My son (5) is using Handwriting Without Tears.