Improving the Children’s Handwriting: 4 Exercises

Would you like to stop hearing complaints about your child’s bad typeface? If the teacher cannot see what your child is talking about, they will automatically rate negatively. It’s not that difficult to improve your handwriting. We have put together four exercises for your child to help them write legibly. 

Bad grades due to bad handwriting

Especially with boys, parents and teachers complain about illegible scribbles in homework, tests and classwork. Rightly so, because a lot of the texts are really hard to decipher.

How should teachers rate texts that they cannot read. How should you judge spelling if you can’t tell how a word was spelled?

The problem has only worsened due to the click and swipe culture of the monitors and screens. But how can your child improve their handwriting and thus positively influence their oral grades?

Good writing materials will help your child

In order for your child to get a good result on paper and improve their handwriting, they first need a pen that suits them and their skills. A fountain pen with a recessed grip and a stable, wide nib is useful. The font then becomes much more dynamic and orderly. It is important, however, that they discover the pen that they feel most comfortable with. Besides, worksheets for kindergarten or workbooks also provide great leverage to improve writing skills. Click here for printable writing worksheets for kids.

The right underlay can also help to improve the typeface. It is good if it is a little soft and pliable so that your child’s hand can slide over the paper in a relaxed manner and without hard resistance. Otherwise the wrist in particular quickly gets tired.

Many factors determine the handwriting

In the first four years of school, teachers often overlook the typeface. Bad handwriting becomes an individual problem by the 5th grade at the latest. Those whose texts are now illegible can expect bad grades. A remedy is needed, but how.

First of all, you need to take a very careful look at the mistakes your child is making.

  • Insufficient differentiation of the letter size, so that upper and lower case cannot be recognized with certainty
  • Lack of orientation on the writing lines, so that words slip
  • Lack of constancy of form (frequent strikeout and overwriting)
  • Cramped writing or pen posture

Exercise 1 Improve handwriting: write slowly

Many children take far too little time to write their texts. Slow down your child if they want to write as quickly as possible.

Practice like this for a while: inhale – one letter exhale – one letter – inhale – one letter – exhale – one letter ……. It improves its handwriting because it writes more slowly.

Exercise 2 Improving the typeface: Correcting the pen position

Check the position of the pen and correct it if necessary. To improve handwriting, it is necessary to hold the pen loosely.

The index finger performs the writing movement; the pen lies loosely on the first link of the middle finger.

It is written without pressure. The thicker the pen, the easier it is to learn this writing posture. The video shows how it’s done.

Exercise 3 Improving the typeface: Practice upper and lower case

If your child has problems with the ratio of uppercase and lowercase letters, have them do the letters e and l (in fluent cursive) on math boxes over several lines.

Here not only the difference in size, but also the basic movement pattern is trained. The handwriting will improve after just a few days.

Exercise 4 Improve handwriting: stick to lines

Many children do not keep the writing lines. Offer your child simple lines, even if they go back to the 3rd or 2nd grade ruling for the time being. Here you can practice adhering to the ruling. Now you can slowly go back to the simple lines.

Motivation is always an important factor in improving handwriting

Show your child that beautiful, legible handwriting has many advantages. In addition to training, it also needs a lot of attention to improve its typeface.

Encouragement and praise. Use font comparisons (old notebooks) to illustrate your progress and create incentives to write by hand (letters, memos, notes).

This is how your child will see a point in improving their handwriting. Certainly handwriting will increasingly be replaced by electronic media in the near future, but it cannot be dispensed with. And as long as children are still writing in school and their writing is being assessed, it is worth improving illegible writing so as not to endanger the grades.

My tip: look for role models

Look for beautiful fonts with your child, for example in books, newspapers or on the Internet. Here they can choose a font that they can copy for practice.

Missing melatonin: get students fit again

With the onset of puberty, a restructuring of the brain and body begins, which is exhausting. School also suffers from this. No wonder when adolescents find it difficult to study and cannot get off the sofa during the day because they are late in producing melatonin. The school takes no account of the changes and complains about procrastinating – that is why it is all the more important to motivate and support the teenagers at home.

Clarify whether your child is healthy

Although fatigue and delays in the production of melatonin during puberty are common phenomena, it is imperative that you see a doctor to determine whether your child is healthy. Exhaustion and persistent tiredness can have other causes than growing up. Possible causes of your teen’s long-term fatigue include:

  • Trouble sleeping
  • Drugs
  • Fatigue syndrome
  • Depression
  • Stress
  • Iron deficiency (period)
  • Hypothyroidism

Over 80% of young people feel badly tired in the morning

However, it is very likely that your child’s tiredness can be traced back to puberty. In American surveys, 82 percent of upper-grade students said they felt tired and bruised in the mornings. More than half admitted that they couldn’t concentrate at all for at least one day a week. No wonder, as teenagers only sleep 7.6 hours on average on weekdays, one to two hours less than required. Not only fatigue, but also heart problems, diabetes, obesity, depression and a shortened life expectancy can be the consequences of persistent sleep deficit in adolescents. So it makes sense to declare war on the lack of sleep without medication or artificial melatonin.