YEAR 2 REALLY BAD HANDWRITING

[bigknickersbigknockers]

DS1 is 7 years old and in year 2 and his writing is bad. Do you think if I asked the teacher to send him some extra work home a couple of times a week she would or is that not the done thing.
Failing that are there any web sites that would help.

Dd is almost 7 and has awful handwriting too.

They have set up a handwriting group who practice at school for a short while every day, and she has some sheets to copy the letters from at home.

I can't see any reason why they couldn't let your son have some sheets to work from - they will have them for working in class.

Ask the teacher - there may be other things that can be done to help him. Or you may find that the teacher really isn't bothered - many children have bad handwriting at this stage.

Thanks wigwam, I think his teacher will help I just didnt want to cause problems. I have decided he is going to have to do some writing practice after school. His reading and spelling are great its just the writing side of things that needs work.

My dd had fairy neat handwriting for her age in year 1 and we found her handwriting started to slip in year 2. Very big letters, forgetting finger spaces, not on the line etc.
I was quite worried about it and she had a tutor for a little while which helped but I was repeativly told not to worry. Apparently its quite common in year 2 for handwriting to slip as they start writing more and concentrating on the content of their work. So the handwriting sometimes slips and they just need to be reminded to keep it up.
It took dd a little while to get back on track but it did just seem to naturally happen. The beginning of y3 I would say was a big improvement.
The problem we are having now is that her handwritings neat but its far to small! where as before it was too big but at least its neat she will get there

I see threads on here a lot about bad handwriting and year 2 boys! My ds is the same. Lots of people have recommended 'Write from the start.'
I bought it but we haven't used it consistently really. (Bad mummy!)

It seems that my daughter has a head full of stuff she wants to get onto the paper before she forgets it, and it's her handwriting which suffers in the rush.

It might be worth considering whether that's the case for your son too, bigknickers.

Maybe she could get it down quick on a scrap bit of paper and then copy it nicely on to the school book. WWB? BKBK I don't think you need extra stuff from the teacher. Just get the DC to copy out of their favourite story book. Will be interesting for them and still be giving them hand writing practice.

"write from the start" is good. Does he have any problems with co ordination? If so, you could ask for a referral to Occupational Therapy.

You might also find that just working on general fine motor skills will help without feeling like schoolwork -- so threading beads or doing modelling or so forth.

My DD's was truly awful until this year, so bad in Year 3 her teacher couldn't read it to mark it. In fact last year I wrote on here in desperation. She is left handed which didn't help and also has an eye convergence problem which means she can see double close too.
However in the last few months there has been a huge improvement and her teacher said it is only a minor problem now and as everything else is so good, who cares

tbh I'd try to avoid simply doing more of the same as at shcool. There is a handwriting programme called Write Start which MNetters have recommended, do fun things like imaginary shopping lists , drawing maps or concentrate on other fine motor activities which build strength and coordination (Hama beads, Lego, playdoh/modelling, scissors). For "homework" experiment with different pencil grips and a softish sloping surface.