Handwriting help for 7 year old

[BruachAbhann]

Hi there,
I'm about to start homeschooling my 7 year old after Christmas. I'm taking him out of mainstream school to home educate as he's not getting on well.
He's gifted in maths and verbal reasoning but really struggles in a big way with hand writing and it's making him very frustrated and holding him back.

Are there any particular resources that work well for improving handwriting? The books look so boring but I'd like to have something to guide me so if you've any suggestions on a good series or course I could do please let me know.

I'll have a large white board against the wall as I think writing standing up will help, and will work on fine and gross motor skills. (putty, clay, lego, movement). I'm considering getting him tested for dyslexia/dyspraxia too. He has pencil grips. Does anyone find a slanted desk is helpful?

Thanks for your help. I'm falling down a rabbit hole looking at online resources so it would be great to hear what has worked for other people.

Hi, my son struggled with handwriting. He has hyper mobile joints and did have poor core strength and low muscle tone. His school was really good and he had intervention from about year 1.

The first thing that was worked on was to improve his core strength and also lots of activities involving crossing the midline and doing things like walking on hands and knees, sitting on a child size pilates ball, commando crawling etc. Shoulder strength was also worked on. He had one of the ribbon things that gymnasts have and did exercises with that. I also remember him drawing at a blackboard with chalk so he would use a full range of movements. Increasing his core stability and strength really helped. Lego is really good for fine motor skills, and clothes pegs, peg boards etc.

He’s 16 now so memories are fading a bit but I think he did throwing and catching, hopping, skipping and gymnastics. Climbing frames and climbing trees are great for gross motor skills.

His handwriting still isn’t perfect and he’s very happy now he’s in 6th form that he doesn’t have any essay subjects! One thing I do wish he would persevere with is touch typing. He had access to a laptop for his GCSEs but didn’t use it.

Great to work on fine and gross motor skills and multisensory methods. Writing or drawing using chunky chalks, thick felt pens, paint and squeezy bottles with water or paint brushes and water will all help. In warmer weather using brushes on walls and chalks on pavements are good to embed letter formation.
Writing Wizard is a really good app for letter formation. It’s engaging and multisensory. You can add your own words or key spelling lists. He can use his finger or a stylus.
Don’t worry about correct grip go with what is comfy for him. Moving forwards, a sloped desk and wrist band may help. He could also stand or use a sensory wedge for sitting.
Has he had an OT assessment?
If he’s good with maths limit his need to write and record for that. You can prepopulate or use laminated or magnetic numbers.
For writing also look at Dragon and Clicker software.
Good luck.

My eldest had hand writing that looked like a spider had dragged its penis across the page (a fantastic phrase I learnt from mumsnet!). It eventually got better age 10.

we practised a lot of generic tracing and colouring in to stay on the line to teach fine motor skills. Tried a few specific books but they felt more like chores than help so moved to the generic colouring.

I had terrible handwriting at his age. My mum used to make me copy out books at home to improve my writing, if it wasn’t nice enough I had to do it again.

I hated it. But I have absolutely gorgeous handwriting as an adult and am frequently complimented.

Lots of really excellent advice here, I’d do it all. the one thing I would add it loads and loads of scissor skill work. I’ve known OT’s focus on only this before any handwriting

handing without tears is very good but you’d need to decide if it’s engaging for him

penpals is also good simply as it groups the letters into families which makes it easier to learn. (Hand writing without tears also does this but starts with the capitals) The full school programme includes OT like exercises etc.

i would second a proper assessment from and OT as they may even have their own programmes to follow.

try a slope board and see if he prefer it.

Have you seen bubble writing?

I agree with PP to get an OT assessment. This really helped with DC1 and handwriting similar to what you have described. She worked on core strength, we kept him in swimming and started taikwondo (across the ML activities like a PP mentioned). It's also slow and controlled movement with set patterns (at the beginning at least).
Our OT used a little blackboard and chalk for writing to get large movements before small

Encourage lots of big mark making, so wallpaper lining paper, large pens etc, master the gross motor skills before refining fine motor skills. Then, to encourage a pincer grip, use small pieces of chalk on a small blackboard (bought cheaply online or Poundland etc). The Letter-join handwriting program can be accessed on a device with a stylus.

We tried all sorts and handwriting is ok for a few words but not much more. At 13 he got a dyslexia diagnosis and he’s learning to touch type. Also going to try speak to text software.

no, I haven't seen that. I'll look it up.

Thanks for the great advice everyone. Lots of practical tips there! I think I'll definitely get an OT and dyslexia appointment too.

Dyspraxia sounds like a possible issue. You might also want to consider aphantasia - an inability to form a mental image or representation. This can make it difficult for the writer to copy a shape/letter and in my DDs case to even plan how to form the parts of letters together. She was assessed for dyspraxia several times and always came out as borderline normal but really, really struggled in the classroom. Typing helped. She is very gifted in math and verbal reasoning too, but school was just a trauma.

She struggled through and is now almost finished an engineering degree and doing research in the quantum computing hardware field She thinks in math rather than pictures apparently. HTH

Teach him to touch type.

Thanks, that's interesting. How did you find out your daughter had aphantasia? Is there a way to test for it?
School is very traumatic for our son. There's a lot going on for him and he was totally traumatised, especially as the principal had absolutely no compassion or understanding of how hard he was finding it. It's a relief to be getting him out of there at least.

We've also bought him a tablet with keyboard attached so will start teaching him to type too.

Great to hear your daughter has ultimately got on well.

My son has dyspraxia, picked up at 7 ish. I'd say Get him typing asap. My son will type all of secondary and in his exams, its so much easier and actually much more relevant to life. Its taken a long time to learn but as hes becoming fluent it hurts his hand less and is becoming faster than hand writing. However, handwriting is a useful life skill so we do focus a bit on it. Hand strengthening stuff like playdough, threading/sewing. Get him to write about things he loves so it's worth the effort. My sons ot said focus on 1 improvement at a time (currently letter spacing), so do some writing, check the spacing, improve it. For subjects he's good at, get him to present his knowledge a different way (voice to text software, presentations, videos etc). Stylus or stability maybe make some special pens and pencils for dyspraxia (easy write I think) which massively helped much better than pencil grips, they're maybe 7 quid on amazon. Just recognising it wasn't him it was a genuine issue really helped my sons frustration and we could reward him for small amounts. If it hurts his hand give rest periods too.

My DS was similar (thanks to a first school which forced them to do cursive from the start). We always have paper and pens available at any time and he does a lot of drawing. His fine motor control is really good now from all the drawing practice and he’s getting more comfortable with writing.

Oh also try lots of different pens. DS really likes the Uniball fine ones, and the Papermate. Pens are often smoother than pencils for them.

Great idea! I'll stock up! Thanks a mill.

Lots of boys struggle with making their writing presentable and legible. What he writes is more important than what it looks like. Forget the handwriting practice books and provide plenty of dexterity opportunities.... scissors, threading, weaving, playdough, baking, hammer and nails, tools

etc. etc

I research visual perception and teach a course which has a unit on visual imagery. We were talking about picturing information at the dinner table and my DD had no idea what we were on about. It's so strange to both her parents as we both have very vivid mental imagery.
It is easy to test for - simply ask your child to imagine an object or a scene and then ask them questions about it - is it colourful? Does it look like a [object name] does in "real life" or does it look dim/fuzzy? There is quite a lot of information about it on the internet now, although back then it was pretty unknown.
In retrospect I would have got her to trace letters etc. to start with, before trying to copy them. Montessori materials for both math and writing are probably quite useful for children without visual imagery.