All About Handwriting

[sharonkhoo]

elsatroy:

An idea can be to remember that handwriting is not as important as the ideas your child is presenting ... Focusing on handwriting slows down the creative and intellectual content of the writing ... few careers depend on neatness ,rather they expect thoughtful ideas and interesting text as the product .Spend your time supporting your child with the content of their writing instead.

Totally agree!

[sembgal]

Children can write neatly and it depends on how their parents view their work. If sloppy work can be accepted, the child will write very untidy. So parents, you must be strict with the handwriting with your child by K1.


My child has very untidy handwriting in K1. Instead of telling her to practise writing constantly on triple lines exercise books, I let her play with play doh - have various sets of Playdoh toys at home. I also correct her letter if she writes illegibly by telling her it is not written correctly and I modelled it for her how to write the letter the correct sequence.

Surprisingly, her handwriting improve and looks neater now in K2 than her K1 writing last year. Children just need more practice on handwriting.

I can suggest you to buy a triple line exercise book and teach your child to write from the basic again, uppercase and lowercase letters. Move on to writing 3 letter words and sight words. Then move on to writing sentences with appropriate spacing. Start from the basic foundation again. Your child will learn through the hard way but it is worth it.

[lovinglife]

Does 繁体字accepted by the school here?

[sembgal]

lovinglife:

Does 繁体字accepted by the school here?

繁体字 has been replaced by 简体字 in schools here in Singapore since a long time ago.

I heard of Taiwan students in primary schools are penalised for using 繁体字。They are advised to use 简体字 for their written work.

[Imami]

lovinglife:

Does 繁体字accepted by the school here?

Donno about now. But I was marked wrong when I wrote 繁体字 during my pri sch days, even though technically the 字 is written correctly. When asked, the teacher did admit I was marked wrong becos I should not be writing 繁体字 .

[nightlone]

actually i don’t bother much about his handwriting coz i think he’ll outgrow it… as long as it’s clear and readable…

[melodyrain2]

Hi Parents here, I would like to have your advice.


DS is in P1 now. His fine motor skills and hands are still weak compare to his peers.

During his preschool years, he keeping switching between two hands. We are not sure if he is a left or right hander, although it appear at times he is more a left hander. Because we are unsure and we live in a right-hand world, we encouraged him to write with his right hand. His preschooler teacher also trained him to write with right hand.

I realised he should be a left-hander now that I read in the earlier pages of this thread. Someone mentioned you can tell by looking at the hair whorl and how all these are related to the way brain is wired and how getting a left-hander to write with right hand may result in stammering and all that.

But he is already using his right hand to write. His hand writing has been ‘ugly’ since his preschool years. Thats the feedback I get at every Meet-the-Parent sessions; that he should improve his handwriting. I am sure I am going to get the same feedback in the coming P1 meet-the-parent too.

His u, a and n are undistinguishable from each other sometimes. He circles and writes o in clockwise direction. His writing is big and always out of line for both Eng and Chinese. His spacing is also not there, letters or words joining to each other, letters and words cramp together towards the end of the line because inaccurate judgement of spacing.

I am thinking of using this June holiday to help him improve his handwriting but I am lost. I dunno what should I do or where to start? Should I change him to right hand, should I send him for external courses, what courses to send now that he is in P1, is it his hand eye coordinator went wrong etc etc etc???

Thanks for the help!

[sharonkhoo]

melodyrain2:

His u, a and n are undistinguishable from each other sometimes. He circles and writes o in clockwise direction. His writing is big and always out of line for both Eng and Chinese. His spacing is also not there, letters or words joining to each other, letters and words cramp together towards the end of the line because inaccurate judgement of spacing.


I am thinking of using this June holiday to help him improve his handwriting but I am lost. I dunno what should I do or where to start? Should I change him to right hand, should I send him for external courses, what courses to send now that he is in P1, is it his hand eye coordinator went wrong etc etc etc?????

Thanks for the help!

I can't comment about RH/LH choice as my kids were obviously one or the other, and the child with poor handwriting was the RH'er. I also can't tell you what your son's issues are - for my daughter, she is just overall poorly coordinated physically, both in gross and fine motor skills. I believe there are recommendations for handwriting therapists earlier in this thread, so you could try that. For my daughter, since it was such a pervasive issue, we did what we could at home rather than try therapy.

This is what we did for her handwriting: we pointed out her poorest letters and problems and get her to practise a little bit daily. She got tired very easily, so we only got her to do maybe 5-10 mins at a time, about twice a day. We also pointed out spacing problems and got her to practise certain letter combinations. For word spacing, we asked her to leave an 'm' space between words. And we reminded her to write on the lines. It was only in P3 that her writing became more regular and more legible. Even now, in sec school, her writing is ugly, but we have decided that it's not something we will stress over. Teachers and markers are accustomed to reading bad handwriting, and even if they complain, they can still read it and will not deduct marks if the answer is correct. In adult life, no-one handwrites anything important. Hope this helps.

[melodyrain2]

Thanks slmkhoo for sharing what you did with your daughter. I think I will start consistent practice first with my son this holidays. I hope it works for him too, saving me the time to bring him to a therapist and $$$. Hoping to see some improvement by end of this year, hope he won’t take too long.

[sembgal]

For parents who want to get professional advice on handwriting, you can get a referral letter from any polyclinic to go KKH for further assessment on your child’s handwriting. There are therapists trained to work on your child’s weak fine motor skill. Better to get assess by 6 years old if your child’s handwriting is illegibly. Neat handwriting is very important in primary schools. Do remember that the teachers have to read and mark so much written work of all the pupils, not marking your child’s work only.