© Beverley Paine, 2004

There are hundreds of different ideas you can use to help your children develop their handwriting abilities. The following extensive list has been compiled from many sources, and is by no means exhaustive!

Many home schooling parents feel the need to schedule separate writing lessons for handwriting practice, although this is not really necessary. Remember, your children are practicing their handwriting whenever they write anything in the other subjects they are studying: writing up an experiment, drawing a hydrological cycle poster, researching a project, and so on.

Activities drawn from ‘real’ life, especially those initiated by your children, although seemingly rare, are perfect ways to practice handwriting skills. Think about when your children write cards to family and friends, invitations to parties, letters to friends, props for various dramatic play games, making board games, letters to the editor of the local newspaper... I'm sure you can think of many more instances. Here is an example from our homeschooling records:

"The boys have been working on a map of an imaginary country. This map is twelve A4 pages joined together, and they have half each. They are putting the final touches on the map, which has taken about twenty hours to draw over nearly a week. The map includes a neatly written, detailed legend on one side which describes the various features. Roger climbs up on a chair to blue tack it to the living room wall. The map is complex, with medieval villages, swamps, mountains, forests, islands, reefs, roads, quarries. Their mum remarks that it looks a lot like the map in Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingingham series. They agree, and some discussion about books that have maps ensues, including Tolkien's books and his decorative labelling style."

List of writing activities useful for practicing and developing handwriting style:

See the following articles from my book 'Learning in the Absence of Education' for more information about how handwriting style and writing can develop naturally with little fuss in the home school:

• Worrying About Writing
• Ideas for Helping Children with Writing