Does anyone have any ideas as to how to encourage ds to improve his handwriting?

[bodiddly]

My ds is about to go into year 5 and his writing isn't great. It's not exactly awful but could definitely stand improvement. He also has a tendency to revert to non joined up writing as he finds he is neater. At parents evening a week ago the year 5 teacher said that the most important thing children could do over the summer is practice times tables and handwriting. Does anyone have any ideas as to ways to engage ds and make it less of a chore? Also, any idea how to encourage him to find his own style? I noticed a couple of examples in his class that looked great.

I would ideally like him to do a little every day and short of copying out sections of Minecraft books I am clueless! All ideas gratefully received, thanks!

I wonder why they ever stopped making children do line after line of loops and other patterns. It was very good for fluidity and penmanship. We did it before we learnt proper writing and it made it all very much easier.

I hate the way school now expects parents to sort everything out. Because many don't. Me for example. :)

Belloc, yes my dissertation was typed (and actually I have always had reasonable handwriting, unlike DS). No, the tutor's comment was about writing ability rather than handwriting ability and that people will make subjective opinions on the quality of the dissertation according to how well it is written. He was marking it and admitted that was his approach! So it was not a surprise to me to learn that such subjective decisions are also applied to handwriting.

Oh and I missed distinction by one mark!

I bet you had to hand write all your exams wombler

The important points in handwriting are consistency in size, and noticeable ascenders and decenders.
To help sizing, we draw a little cat at the beginning of the line. The head is for the ascenders ( eg the tall part of b,d,h etc), the body (sitting on line) is for the body of the letter (a,c,bottom part of b etc), and the tail which hangs down under the line is for descenders( p,y,g etc).
You could also use a broad highlighter pen across the bottom half of a line to indicate where the body of the letter goes.So the a is the same size as o,c,n,etc and the bottom half of the tall letters such as h.
You could also check that the letters are correctly formed- you can get guides for this. For children who have found this difficult, I have used a dot to show the starting place of each letter to ensure that they are clear. You can also practice forming the shapes correctly by tracing them in sand, or in the air, before putting pen to paper.
Once these issues are sorted out, a child will usually develop their own style.