childs handwriting

webitha

my 7yr old DD, started off in sept with lovely handwriting, but since then gone rapidly gone downhill,
it really is that bad, so much so that she has not had a breaktime in over 2 months as she has beeen kept in to rewrite her work as it is completely unintelligible (which i quite agree with her teachers, she shouldnt be so lazy then :D)

has anyone know of any courses/worksheets that i can download for free, because all i can find is either ones i have to pay for, or ones to help learn smaller kids learn to write iykwim
or is it just practice, practice, practice

sooz

this one lets you type your own words onto the practice paper
My DS's handwriting has been greatly helped by just printing the blank lined paper, for him to write his own stories & comics.
He also helps write all (small) shopping lists, & is in charge of them when we go shopping. It take much longer , but we are seeing results.

bandraoi

Have you tried to find out why this is the case?
Doesn't sound normal to me.

webitha

i have had quite a few words with her and her teacher, apparently even tho she is the brightest girl in her class he daydreams a lot then has to rush her work

bandraoi

It sounds to me like she may be deliberately avoiding play time, need glasses, have some form of an undiagnosed hand injury or well any number of other things.

kjmtidea

Have you spoken to her teacher? When my eldest was being taught how to join his writing up, it all went very messy for a few months - it is getting readable again now. Also in September my childrens school changed the way they do a lot of things like the sounds, the way they start off writing a letter, joining up etc. Has anything like that happened?

I bought some A4 notepads in wilkinsons a couple of weeks ago, they have two thirds plain paper and then the rest is lined so that they can draw a picture and then write about it - the lines definitely help!

nottslass_2

Alarm bells are ringing ! Surely no,otherwise bright 7 year old,would choose to redo all her work (if she was just lazy,she'd have sussed how to do it only the once) and go without a play time for 2 months,without good reason.

As others have said,she is deliberately avoiding playtime,her teacher is expecting too much(or picking on her),or there is some other physical issue,ie eye sight,concentration (no necessarily her fault).

Please look at the wider picture - it would be a crime for an otherwise bright child to get "lost in the system" or wrongly labelled "lazy."

Hope all goes well

webitha

she just had an annual eye test 20:20 vision, she is one of the popular kids in school, but (and im sorry if i offend anyone i dont mean too) she is a typical blonde airhead, she goes off into a world of her own at hime too, so its not just at school, that is until i give her tasks to do on the internet iykwim, could it be boredom????
he teacher loves her to death and she adores her teacher,
i have also started to giver her some eye q as my eldest had concentration probs too.

omg it must be me if they both have probs lol

maddysaver

I agree with the other posters. There is a lesser known condition called dysgraphia which can cause a child's handwriting to be unusually messy, although it usually comes along with other symptoms of wrist pain and various other things to do with fine motor co-ordination.

My son's handwriting was extremely poor all of last year and we had a terrible time with it (he's in Yr4 now) and his teacher went on and on AND ON about it - making us and him paranoid. But at the beginning of this year his new teacher didn't make a fuss, but noticed he had problems seeing the board. We got eyes tested and he needed glasses. Hand writing has improved out of all recognition. Partly the glasses and partly the teacher letting up on the nagging.

I feel sorry for your little girl and I'd want to know what the real problem is if I were you - I hope you get to the bottom of it...

Edit: I took so long writing this and cross-posted with you - I guess most of this doesn't count in light of your post #8

jellyhead

webitha wrote: »

she has not had a breaktime in over 2 months as she has beeen kept in to rewrite her work as it is completely unintelligible

I know you agree with teacher but personally I'd be upset if my child at 7 was missing all the playtimes. It sounds unecessarily harsh

looby75

sooz wrote: »

this one lets you type your own words onto the practice paper
My DS's handwriting has been greatly helped by just printing the blank lined paper, for him to write his own stories & comics.
He also helps write all (small) shopping lists, & is in charge of them when we go shopping. It take much longer , but we are seeing results.

just wanted to say a big thank you for that link. My ds handwriting is horrendous, we have tried everything to help him improve but he loses interest very quickly, so I'm planning on copying out some of his doctor Who comic stories for him to write down. That site is going to make it so much easier

One thing that is really starting to bug me now though is that the school seems to have given up on getting him to improve. Each week they have to do a "big write" basically a hand written story, ds's teacher says his content is excellent but his writing is so bad it gets missed as no one can read it....so they make him type it out on the pc each week :wall: How is his handwriting ever going to get any better if they let him type the longest piece of writing they do each week?