Teaching your child to write

These were originally copied from this Yahoo Answers page.

by Eclecktic@yahoo.com

While the curriculum you mention IS a great one, realize that there are many others out there and no ONE method is going to be the perfect match for you and your child. Using kinesthetic (motor) methods is a good idea to teach handwriting. Use the whole arm to practice making the motions needed to form the letters. Let the child feel the motions needed to make the letters needed through their whole arm before trying to isolate into just their hand and fingers. "Draw" the letters in the air before making them on the chalkboard (or whiteboard), then moving to paper. Get the feel of the letters ingrained by tracing them on sandpaper, painting them with finger paint and so on to really get all the senses activated.
Pick the alphabet (cursive such as Palmer or a D'Nealian printing) that you want to use and start practicing as another suggested on a chalkboard or whiteboard. Occupational therapist handwriting expert Mary Benbow who designed the program _Loops and Other Groups_ believes the older system of teaching cursive first may actually be easier and more natural for children than learning printing. So you may want to consider that.
You may also want to browse Project Gutenberg for out-of-copyright old penmanship books. Those old books sometimes have great ideas!

Source(s):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Meth...
http://www.dnealian.com/samples.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwriting
http://www.sbac.edu/~werned/DATA/FMINFO/...

I'm a retired school occupational therapist

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Here's a cool game. All you need to do is remove overlaps and cross overs.

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1 cup vinegar
1 cup baking soda
2 cups of water
A few drops of essential oil of your choice

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Make a few drops of essential oil to generate the fragrance.

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Here is a guide when planning a project. My boss showed me this and my mind went organized.

1. Scope/Target - Conceptualization
2. Concept
3. Gather Info
Research Paper
Samples (categorize the samples)
Why of the protocol (everything about the protocol. i.e. file formats)
4. Baseline Implementations
Exemptions (lessen problems)
Root pattern implementation (scope it all)
Sample segregating implementation
5. Testing
all testing
scope testing
regression
product testing
6. project dependencies and other solutions
7. Maintenance (covers timely reports and graphs)