Teaching Children Handwriting (the easy way)

I like teaching handwriting, I may have mentioned this before – mainly because it is so easy to teach. So I thought I’d do a quick post about Jude’s handwriting improvements over the last seven months.

Before I start I’d like to say, by way of disclaimer, that a large part of the reason I homeschool is so that we can give our children a life that is relatively stress free. Of course I’m proud of what they achieve but it’s the quality of our days together that are important. We spend less than two hours per day on academic work, for Jude, who would only be in Reception, it is more like an hour. Less if he gets on and doesn’t waste time. I don’t want anyone to think I work them really hard or anything as it’s quite to the contrary, they would have much less free time if they were in school.

So, stree free handwriting teaching. Rule number one: start young. I start to teach formal handwriting as soon as they can write all the letters of the alphabet, with Jude this was just before he was five. Schools in the UK often don’t start until later and by that time they have formed lots of bad habits. And handwriting usually only happens once a week in school so they forget what they’ve learnt during the week. Well, here is a piece of independent writing that Jude did in October 2012:

It says, Buzz says “Ola” Buzz Lightyear he says “To infinity and beyond” in case you were wondering.

Around this time, Jude began to practise his handwriting every day. Rule number two: little and often. He would spend fifteen minutes maximum on this job but we did it every day. First he had to write all the letters of the alphabet independently. I would then mark them with him and he repeated any letters he had formed or placed incorrectly. Then he did his handwriting sentence. I wrote each word above and he would copy on the line underneath. This is a piece of work from November 2012.

After a week or so of doing this he could spell some of the words by himself so would write those words independently then ask me to write the harder ones. I would mark his work after each word, a word at a time. It’s intensive but this makes it very short because you can keep the momentum up and they don’t lose concentration too much.

By the end of November, only two months after the Buzz Lightyear writing at the start of the post, Jude could write his handwriting sentence independently and no longer needed me to sit by him all the time.

And that’s all we do. Every day, fifteen minutes of handwriting. It has to be his best work because he’s free to write how he wants the rest of the time. By March this year, I would tell him to draw his own lines and he would go over to the table and work totally independently.

This is the handwriting Jude did today. He asked to write a different sentence so we started doing some Michael Jackson lyrics because he loves this song so much. I gave him the three hard spellings at the top and he did the rest by himself with just a little chivvying from me. Of course, he’s a five year old boy so he has the concentration span of a gnat. He kept getting up and doing Michael Jackson moves but because he can write so much faster it still wasn’t much longer than fifteen minutes.

My aim is to stop teaching handwriting by the time the children are seven and Jude’s sister who is nearly seven no longer needs any lessons and hasn’t for some time. Her handwriting is sorted. You may wonder what Jude’s writing looks like when he isn’t having a formal handwriting lesson, well, because he’s a boy he still isn’t especially keen on writing. While his sister was writing her own book this afternoon (yes really, it’s called ‘The Orange Pear’ for some reason and she’s on the third chapter) Jude preferred to colour in Spiderman pictures and practise his Michael Jackson moves. But he decided to write a quick note to his ten year old cousin because he wants to send him his Spiderman PS3 game to play until he gets to the Black Spiderman level and then give it back. You may wish to look back at this point to how Jude was writing last October…because this is how he writes now:

Africa – by Jude (age 5)

i went to afrik I went on a er plan.

I sor a muky. i sor unklerl erfer . i sor unkl agray. (sorry, we didn’t get a photo of the monkey in Nana’s garden)

i had a buzlityir for mi bufdey.

i went to unklbrierns weding.

I had a rid on a motbik.

I trid gote.it wos dlishush.

I had a spider-man kostym for krismus.

I had a spider man.

ihad krisms din.and the en I went bak to ingld.

Thank you (by Cana – “am I 6 and three quarters yet mummy?” and Jude – age 5.

To ernt seru and uncol mertin thank you for mi bash and dinsors and cer. I dont like them I love them. From Jude xxxxxxxxxxxx

To Aunty Sarah and Uncle Martin, thank you for my draws and my pencils and my spiecel pen. I like my draws because I can keep bits and bobs in them, and me and mummy have bilt it all ready.Thank you so much. Lots of love Cana.xxx

To Aunty Sarah, Uncle Martin and Baby Belle, I love my tea-trolley so much that I am currently sitting on top of it eating a pretend lemon. It is suprisingly sturdy! You were very clever to guess how much I like making cups of tea for people. Thank you very much. Love Mae xxx

Angel of the North – by Jude (age 4 years, 354 days)

This is the enjl ov the nof. We went to see it.

Daddy toc a picher ov me and Cana and mumumy.

I toc this picher ov Cana.

Cana btentit the ajl ov the nof woz a slid.

I like it becous its so big.

I t wos windy we went hom.

Breakfast – by Jude (age 4yrs, 11months)

I didt hav brecfsd at home I went too Gregs.i had a sosig rol. I had a ecler it wos disgusding.

Cana had a donut.

Handwriting practise with a 4 year old

Thought I’d post a quick picture of Jude’s handwriting practise. Schools generally don’t introduce joined-up writing until key-stage two but I have seen it taught very successfully much earlier so I introduced it as soon as my children know how to form their letters correctly. It makes writing much faster for children and they enjoy the grown-upness of it.

With writing though, it’s important to separate quality and content. For small children you can’t really ask for both. So when Jude does his own sentences he writes however he wants pretty much. As long as it’s legible and the letters are formed properly, I don’t mind if the words aren’t on the line or there are no ascenders and descenders. It’s all about what he is writing.

However, every day we do a bit of handwriting practise which is purely about quality. So what he is writing doesn’t really matter as long as it looks good. Jude, because he is still only four, first writes the alphabet by himself and then I mark it with him and tell him which letters are perfect because they are on the line and facing the right way. He still forgets how to write a q and a z as they don’t usually come up in his other writing.

Then we do his joined handwriting practise together. I write a word and he copies it underneath, at the moment I still talk him through each word, “do your l, then up to start the top of your a, then up again for your zig-zag zebra, then up you go into your y and don’t forget to loop his tail up.” As he gets more confident I will stop doing this, in fact he can do some of the words without help already.

When we have done that I give him one letter to practise as a writing pattern, children love doing this. If you let them do it in a coloured pencil they don’t even think they’re practising handwriting! And that’s our handwriting practise. It takes about 15 minutes.

Learning High Frequency Words

Well, as we speak this wonderful language called English, it means that there are lots of common words that are not phonetically plausible. There is not really any way of teaching them except boring lists but you can turn the lists into something a little more exciting.

Jude has been learning to read his first 45 high frequency words, so to make it fun for him I put them in sets of 12 on to a racetrack with a car-character from one of his favourite TV shows. As he learnt to read each word he coloured in that section of track and when he got to the top I bought him that car as a prize. Here are his completed Racetracks:

When Jude had learnt to read all 45, we went back to the beginning and he has been learning to spell the words – hence the ticks and smiley faces. As he has nearly finished this he is ready to move on the next boring list which is the first 100 high frequency words. He has moved on from Roary the Racing car and is now into Super-heroes so he has asked me to make him a Spider man and a Power Ranger word list. So here they are:


You would not believe how much Jude loves this Spider man word list. He actually begs to be able to do his words and sometimes cries when I tell him to put it away. Sometimes having an obsessive child is quite handy!