7-8 year old handwriting. Your advice please.

[angel nee nee]

Hi everyone.
My son has never really enjoyed handwriting.
When we started homeschooling, we started with cursive writing. He does OK.
Most of the time, I think he is not doing his best job. Sometimes if he has too much handwriting to practice, he told me his hand got too tired.
If I encourage him, he does Okay job and I can tell he is putting effort into handwriting.

We started with new grade yesterday. Now he is practicing on wide ruled notebook. Practicing using margin and whatnot.

It has only been his second day with his new grade, so it's hard to tell, but I'm wondering if it will benefit him more to do a grade below with handwriting, or just stick with it.

What I'd like to ask you is, do you think it makes a big difference what grade level of handwriting he practices at his age? When student pretty much knows letter formations and writing rules like spacing, etc.

I think what we are practicing now is just new and perhaps a bit intimidating to him. It is a new setting (no more dotted lines, and he started using pens now.).

His handwriting is... meh. He pays attention to margins. I still have to remind him the capitalization rules or he forgets often. If I remind him, he makes effort to space each words. His letter formations are okay, but could use more practice making them more uniform.

What do you think? Purchase a grade below? Or stick with what we have, and watch to see if he progresses?

I am thinking sticking with it, and with daily practice and encouragements, he will improve on his handwriting skill over a year, but if you think going a grade below will benefit him, would you share your experience/advice? Thanks in advance, everyone.

[tallanvor]

I would just stick to what you have. It's something that gets better with practice. Depending on what other curriculum you have, you might also consider combining practice with something else. For instance, after my oldest did a year of cursive, she really didn't want to do another handwriting book, so we combined it with her English.

[angel nee nee]

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. I want him to work on his creative writing skill. His hand writing will hopefully improve with during creative writing practice to. I have to also remember not to put too much workload fun factor is important.

[Gaiaschild]

What kind of exercise does he get? I was recently reading something about how monkey bars help develop the same muscles necessary for handwritingl. Something I might encourage in my reluctant and lazy writer.

[cedavid2011]

We do a lot of copywork for both manuscript and cursive. The nice thing about it is that it reinforces correct spelling and grammar also. I just ordered some books from Queen homeschool supplies. They had a sports book and an animal book, which are right up my sons' alleys. You wouldn't even need to buy anything though. He could just copy a passage out of a book or you could write or type something up for him to copy. You can even tailor it to go along with other lessons like Bible, science, or history.

[angel nee nee]

Thanks for the advice on money bars, and for your advice too, Corrine. He's doing his best with handwriting practice. I guess I'll stick with what we have here.

[anglee80]

I used handwriting without tears with my son in Kinder and who had trouble with handwriting. Worked awesome. We bought the books..but honestly he did really good with the chalk board method. You can find it on youtube.

Get a hand held chalk board. chalk. little pieces of wet baby(small enough for him to pinch with his thumb and point)

The videos will show you the method. They have a cursive program that we are going to use.

[angel nee nee]

Thanks! I will check it out.

[Paislie98]

Originally Posted by anglee80 I used handwriting without tears with my son in Kinder and who had trouble with handwriting. Worked awesome. We bought the books..but honestly he did really good with the chalk board method. You can find it on youtube. Get a hand held chalk board. chalk. little pieces of wet baby(small enough for him to pinch with his thumb and point) The videos will show you the method. They have a cursive program that we are going to use.

I'm a teacher and this is a great program I've taught with. What about using the fatter pencils, maybe a fine motor issue?