Fun Handwriting Worksheets for Your Child to Practice
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Fun Handwriting Worksheets for Your Child to Practice was made possible with a Lifetime Membership from Homeschool Copywork for review as part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew. We are affiliates with Homeschool Copywork as well, so links are affiliate ones.
One of the skills that I sometimes struggle with teaching the boys at home is handwriting. We’ve tried different programs and it seems like an eternal struggle for us.
Out of 4 boys, one of them has decent handwriting and that was from spending a few years in school with a teacher who insisted on great handwriting if you wanted a good grade. After all, if it is messy it takes a teacher too much time to decipher. With 30 or so students to grade compared to my 3, it is no wonder that messy handwriting just got marked as wrong!
Why You Should Use Handwriting Worksheets
What I’ve come to realize is that there are 2 factors contributing to certain sons having terrible handwriting. The first one is tied to how they are taught, or more specifically the need to be insistent upon using the proper technique rather than just attempting to copy. With my youngest son, I am trying to have him redo work as I see mistakes being made and am almost always sitting alongside him as he is in the process of forming the letters.
The second factor which contributes to legible handwriting is the need to practice.
“Practice makes perfect!” is the saying we’ve all heard. And, as I got older I also started to hear that to truly master something you need to spend about 10, 000 hours doing it! Well, if you are doing your learning more old school with books and paper instead of going mostly digital, then your child will most likely be racking up thousands of hours of practice when it comes to their handwriting!
While a child might spend hours writing answers to problems, you still need to set aside time for them to focus mostly on the formation of their letter, words, sentences, and paragraphs using proper form to have legible handwriting. For all my years of homeschooling (this is our 10th!), the one suggestion that keeps popping up is to have them do copywork.
Copywork can be as simple as having them copy sentences or longer passages from a primary source. This is a skill that can be useful down the line when doing research papers, yet can cause some serious anxiety in some kids as they try to balance keeping a book open, reading the correct passage, and then attempting to form everything correctly upon a blank sheet of paper.
Homeschool Copywork’s Handwriting Worksheets
When you purchase a membership to Homeschool Copywork, you get access to 54 different ebooks! They are segregated by approximate grade level corresponding to the skill set you would expect. Upper grades are in cursive while the early elementary are in manuscript. The newest ebooks contain 5 different options: Ball and Stick Manuscript, D’Nealian Manuscript, Lined Cursive, and Unlined Print and Cursive for older students.
Our Experience with Homeschool Copywork’s Handwriting Worksheets
For this particular review, my youngest son was the primary user. Like I shared, I want him to be learning proper formation of letters even if it is driving me a little insane to keep reminding him to start at the top and work down instead of his inclination (like another older brother) to start everything on the baseline.
Given that he is in kindergarten and the beginning of the process for writing, we looked exclusively at Transportation Copywork for Prek – 1st Grade with Animal Alphabet Copywork Pages as the one to move to when the transportation one is complete.
The boy who fusses over writing in his phonics curriculum has loved using these pages!
I think knowing he can color the pictures after doing the handwriting worksheets has him feeling better about the process. I still need to sit alongside and do my best to encourage him on proper letter formation (it’s an uphill battle!), but I don’t have to stress over a meltdown about the work. The physical act of writing can be almost painful for some, including a few of my boys. Having it be more fun is helpful for getting them to practice.
Although the review period had a focus on my youngest son, I noticed that Amy has a few ebooks on topics my older boys are studying. We are in the middle of a study on Beethoven in our music appreciation program, so I just downloaded that one for them to do. Additionally, my 7th grader is doing life science this year. Amy has a section of bonus products including Human Body Notebooking Pages and Human Life Notebooking Pages which I plan to incorporate for our last few weeks of school.
Don’t just take my word for how we found this to be. Visit Homeschool Copywork Review post on the Schoolhouse Review Crew website to see what other homeschooling parents thought about this and other self-paced courses.
Handwriting has been a challenge for us as well. My kids are older now, and I wish I had made them spend more time practicing when they were younger. Now that we have access to a Lifetime Membership of Homeschool Copywork, they will be practicing daily!