How to improve handwriting 7yo

[Monvelo]

My DS is 7.5yo and is in year 3, so is now having to start to do more writing, and write longer passages. His poor writing and fine motor skills were raised by the teacher at parents evening. His writing is legible but scruffy and big. More wide, rather than too tall. He doesn't always form letters correctly.

I know that fine motor comes from gross motor. This was raised as an issue from pre-school age. His motor skills are by no means awful, he can ride a bike, swim, catch a ball, bat, kick. He can make lego creations. But he can't do things like tie laces, or open a banana!

We have purchased chunkier pencils to assist handwriting, he's tried a pencil grip, the teacher tried highlighting the lines differently to guide him more. In the past we've done things like dough discos to strengthen his hands, although this was a few years ago.

I'm after suggestions for things I can do at home to help him. I don't think that handwriting books are the answer - and we already do some writing practice once a week. I don't want to make this a massive chore for him. He's doing amazingly in all other areas.

Thanks very much!

Alas you have to do writing practice every day if you want him to improve, only way to improve the muscles.

We did Magic Link Handwriting and it worked but £££ for the books and, as above, have to do it every day.

Really? For what amount of time?

Honestly my advice would be don't bother.

I had the same with my DS, every year until he was about 9 or 10 there were constant negative comments made by teachers about his writing. We practiced and practiced, bought all the special pens and copy books etc. it just didn't work and all it did was make DS feel like crap and get frustrated. I eventually told the teachers to stop commenting on it, it was legible so they could easily read and correct, it just wasn't neat.

DS is very academic, nothing short of As and Bs in all of his subjects in secondary school now. His writing still isn't the neatest, but I couldn't care less. Children, and adults, need to write less and less so I don't see the importance of it being perfectly neat.

This maybe isn't the kind of answer you wanted, but both my DS and my DSS struggled with handwriting/letter formation and hated handwriting practise, so we stopped trying and the handwriting just sort of clicked for them eventually. The change was pretty much overnight and so dramatic that with both children their teachers said they had to double check that the work they were marking definitely belonged to them, because it was such a massive improvement. For DS this happened aged 8 and for DSS it was aged 10.

I don't think it hurts to do fun stuff at home to build up motor skills - playing ball games or getting out the playdoh, but I'm also not sure daily handwriting practise at home is always necessary.

My ds is younger than yours op (he turned 6 between pic 1 and 2) but the attached pics were taken 4 months apart. We got him to do 5-10 mins a day during the summer - it was a pain to get him to do it but the daily practice made a huge difference. It was only for 6 weeks though; I don't think we could have sustained it for longer

@FlamingoYellow that's very much what I've been thinking for the last 3 years! I suppose I am just getting twitchy now because of his age and school needing it to be better than it is. I don't want him to not be able to get the brilliance of his brain down onto paper! I was almost thinking more, do I need to do a bead craft or take him rock climbing 😆

Thanks for sharing that @Legomania , my ds is similar to the left, a bit more developed but no where near as good as the second pic.

My y3 7yo is very much the same and he finds the handwriting practice books boring. The only thing he doesn't mind (as long as it's not more than a couple of sentences) is free writing in his 'letter lines handwriting paper' book I got off amazon. So I can just say to him things like, can you write a quick note for dad etc. writing on the lines has helped to reduce the size of his writing in general.

Meant to say we have the regular lines (orange book) not the green wide lined

If he likes beads and rock climbing then go for it!

I'll show you the before and after for my DS. He played with some playdoh and he LOVES beads and the monkey bars at the park. That was all I did with him really.

The Magic Link programme is good and should help, but you may also want to investigate dyspraxia which is quite common in boys. Dyspraxic students are allowed to type and may even qualify for extra time in exams as they grow older. It's a bit of a pain in junior/primary school though and one of these things that should get a little better in time.

There's thousands of activities that will help that aren't pencil on paper. Thread beads, Lego, write on a play whiteboard this can be anything he enjoys, dogman books, footie scores, Pokémon etc

Once a week?! Surely he is doing it every day for spellings at that age? When you read out his spelling read out a whole sentence with the spelling word in and he writes the whole sentence. Any that isn’t perfect he writes again until it is.
Every day.
This is for a typical child. So if your son’s handwriting is poor you need to be supporting him even more!

Building Lego, making friendship bracelets, painting 3d models, painting by numbers, jenga, buckaroo, operation game, knitting, crochet,

Don’t bother spending time practicing writing, he does enough in school and will benefit from more fun creative fine motor skills activities outside of school. It will most likely click into place eventually without killing any joy he takes in writing.

We don't get spellings from school! They stopped it a couple of years back.