Careful handwriting comes from careful practice, and often that practice comes at home. If your child struggles with her penmanship, help her improve in a few easy ways.
Buy Lined Paper
The first thing you’ll need to do is help your child find lined paper to use rather than regular white typing paper or even notebook paper. The lined paper should have a dark line at the top and the bottom. In the middle of each row should be a dashed line to help your child find the middle of the row as a guidance for the correct heights of her letters.
Using the proper paper will help her practice correctly. Practising her letters incorrectly will only make the wrong format stick in her mind more solidly.
Offer Examples
Offer your child examples for each letter. On a row start by drawing a dark letter, perhaps a capital A. Then draw the A using a dashed line that your child can trace over to practice the motion. Finally, have her carefully fill in the rest of the row with carefully written A’s in the same format as the examples.
Supervised Practice
Help your child practice by watching over her efforts with lavish praise, perhaps a few treats and gentle correction as necessary should the letters be formed incorrectly or another mishap occur.
Look For Potential Problems
As your child writes look for potential problems or other factors that might influence your child’s writing. For example, she might be holding the pencil incorrectly or she might be struggling to write right-handed when she is really more comfortable with her left hand. Reversed letters and mistakes within letters at an early age are fairly common, but if the problems continue speak to your child’s teacher about your observations to rule out a more serious problem such as dyslexia.
