Print Handwriting Practice

I have a love/hate relationship with proper handwriting.  I’m sure it all started back in 3rd grade when I learned cursive and my teacher, Mr. Abrams, would always return my papers with the same note: “Good work, handwriting could be neater.”  It was a bit soul crushing at times but now I can understand better.

I see the importance of neat handwriting when I try to decipher hubby’s chicken scratch or when I have to fill out every form for our family just to save the people who actually read them from having to decode his hieroglyphics.  And I appreciate that because I did so painstakingly work on my handwriting, both print and cursive, through the years, I can now write in many different ways because I so carefully honed my fine motor writing skills.

It’s an important skill I want my children to have as well.  I want them to value the way the communicate their thoughts through written words by taking the time to be neat and precise in both their choice of words and how they present them in writing.  And it’s been a struggle from the start with Honeybun.

I remember her coming home from VPK and arguing with me when I tried to correct her for how to make certain letters (specifically As, both upper and lowercase).  I wanted her to learn to write neatly and fluently and the school was teaching her all these contrived ways of making multiple strokes for letters which not only left her letters unconnected and sloppy but is not the way we as adults write.  She would tell me “this is how my teacher says to do it!” and I would respond “then do it that way at school and this way at home, my way will make it easier to write when you’re older.”

The problems continued through kindergarten when she would get sent home additional worksheets for practicing handwriting and through our first year of homeschooling where I would constantly ask her to use her best writing for spelling and she would argue and fight me about it.  Now she is desperate to learn cursive but I am hesitant to take that next step when she still doesn’t want to take the time to print properly.  I want her to be ready to learn to write cursive with the precise control and attention to neatness that I wish she possessed with printing.

So with Sugarplum, I’ve started early.  I’m really pressing her to use her best handwriting all the time and constantly reviewing with her how to properly form the letters (she likes to start letters from the bottom and I’m trying to get her to understand that most letters and numbers start at the top).  I correct her writing and have her practice and trace frequently.

But I’m not a big fan of the handwriting practice books I find at places like the dollar store that go through each letter in alphabetical order.  I simply can not understand how teaching how to write “A” followed by “B” then “C” is in any ways useful.

I distinctly remember learning to write cursive starting with “i” then “t” followed by “e” and “l” because they are formed the same!  We went through the entire alphabet learning letters in groups that are formed the same way.

So I set off to create my own handwriting practice sheets for the girls using this same method of grouping similarly formed letters.  Download my complete package of Print Handwriting Practice.

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