Penmanship: The Art of Teaching Handwriting

Sticky and sweet, chocolate pudding is thick enough for resistance and smooth enough to allow for the curving lines of cursive. Once you are finished writing a letter, don't forget to lick your fingers. What a fun way to practice your penmanship!

Sand is used to create a quiet meditative place. Sand is raked into precise geometric forms surrounding rocks and plants to resemble flowing water. Children can get a feel for a Zen Garden while practicing their handwriting while forming cursive letters in the sand with a rake.

Roll the clay or play dough into long snakes and then use these snakes to form letters in cursive. The long snakes remind the children that the letters keep flowing in cursive without picking up their pencils. If you use self-hardening clay you might be able to have the children write their names and use these names to decorate your room.

Swirl the glue in delightful curves. Create perfect letters that flow across the page. Writing with glitter and glue is a fun, artistic way to practice cursive and the control needed to write in glue and glitter will help improve handwriting.

Traditionally words are written on cakes and cupcakes in fancy, swirly, cursive. You can encourage your children to practice their cursive with Melissa and Doug wooden cupcakes. The tops or frosting on the cupcakes can be written on with dry erase markers. What a fun place to practice their handwriting!

Did you know that there is a paint for turning any surface into a chalkboard? I have seen the walls of an entire kitchen painted in black chalkboard paint. Children could practice their handwriting all over the kitchen. Imagine practicing penmanship on the kitchen walls.

Is good penmanship becoming extinct? Are we loosing our abilities generation by generation? Think about the people in your family. Think of the diaries and letters written by those people. Even after Aunt Mary's (Born in 1867) hands became shaky she still had beautiful handwriting. Ira, my step-father, had the beautiful swirls and impeccable handwriting learned by the Palmer Method. (Born 1900). Mom and Dad's cursive is legible but nothing to brag about. (Born in the 1930's) My handwriting was adequate until I began to teach handwriting. (Born 1950's) It has improved tremendously but not the work of art of 100 years ago. My children have all been taught to write both in print and in cursive but generally choose not to. (Born around 1990).

Not only do children need to learn to write in cursive, they need to learn to read it as well. Writing at least part of the morning message in cursive will help children become familiar with the way words look when written in cursive. As we begin learning cursive I slowly begin to write more and more of the words in cursive. I begin with the words "Good Morning". These are words that the children have come to expect at the beginning of the morning message each day so they can quickly read those words.

During independent centers, I place laminated word cards in the cursive center for the children to trace with dry erase markers. Tracing the letters helps kinesthetic learners to begin reading the words in cursive.