Reddit mentions: The best children handwriting books

I felt the exact same when I was an almost-13-year-old! I've always loved cursive and calligraphy. My 8th grade English teacher used to assign handwritten journal entries every week for our reading logs (do you still do reading logs?)

Anyways, I taught myself cursive and used the entries as practice. I haven't gone back since! If you ever want to teach yourself, look into getting a cursive workbook from Amazon! They're super inexpensive. Here's their best seller if you're interested.

And your handwriting is great btw :)

I have play doh mats. That's a lot of fun. I do textured letters and numbers. I have I Spy Activities (worksheets) for both. You can make activity bottles or exploring bags.

Work on tracing. I have a ton of tracing worksheets. If you can use iPads, there are some awesome apps that my students love. I give them a stylus and let them go. If you have a student who can't make a mark on a page, give them crayons and coloring sheets. Let them go. Use white glue to trace around basic shapes and have them learn to color in the lines. But start with tracing sheets. Work on grip. Talk to the OT about that.

Its baby steps. You can't learn to run before you can crawl. Hand me two pencils means nothing if you don't understand the concept of two. The steps I use with math are more and less, hand me more, identifying numbers 1-5, and then quantity 1-5. For reading, I start with the letters of their first name. At the same time I will also have activities where they have to find their name in a group of names. I have cubbies where the students have to put their folders every morning and they have to put their folders where their name is and I also do an attendance thing where they move a magnet of their name (I used paint cards from Home Depot and magnet tape and I use it in my opening, they have to choose their name from the group and move it up to show they are here today). Once I can get 50% on the letters of their name, I start with the rest of the alphabet. I start with matching capital to capital. Then lowercase to capital. At the same time I will do I spy sheets or discovery type things. For writing, I go with tracing first. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and cross shape first. Then curves, and circles. Once they mastered that, we move to letters of their first name. Once we get to 50% of that, we move to capital letters, then lowercase. This is the book I HIGHLY recommend for beginning writing. It is what I use. This would be your next step.

I would look into watching Leap Pad DVDs for a period after lunch. The videos are relatively inexpensive. Just watch 1 DVD after lunch.

These books are the best
Every kid I’ve worked with loves them
Best part is they’re reusable and kids love to wipe them clean
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312521839/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_gRhQDbCNV5R4Q

I will definitely check those out, thanks! I'm a big fan of the beauty of Spencerian so something that comes close but is good at speed means I'm definitely interested. I may wind up switching from...whatever it is that I'm learning.

I know it sounds weird, but I improved my handwriting by using those workbooks from 1st and 2nd grade where you trace the letter and then write it on your own like ten times after that. Plus I've found writing in all capital letters helps improve my handwriting. You just gotta practice and find what works best for you. I actually get compliments on my handwriting these days, when back in high school I used to get hell for how shitty my handwriting was.
Edit: workbooks like this, then you can upgrade to higher level ones

"the tree must mining full thaing I kare are my grandmall my brothes and my apirons well the apirons to me is the most in Portan't case theyere are some mang apirisons and that wat make you yeu winother peopole eye's lik wen my grandmall farstt dold me that apirison is evergthn she shae .... " goes on for a while.

First I would recommend buying this series (I think it goes from step A to 3) . It's not that expensive and it worked wonders for my kids with disabilities. It's incredibly step-by-step and probably at this child's level. I would supplement it with some very structured graphic organizers that force the child to form each idea separately.

1. Not to be racist, but what ethnicity is this child? The spelling would indicate that the child is still in the beginning stages of using within-word spelling patterns, but it also seems to show the child either speaks with an accent, or has very poor phonological awareness and phonics skills (can't hear the sounds - letters out of order, and doesn't know the correct letter-patterns). I don't know what your district requirements are for qualifying for an IEP, but I would push to have this child evaluated. From this sample, I would say the child is performing around the second grade level, which should more than qualify them. It may be difficult, but this site describes the process. If your school brushes you off, get their parents involved. This child will not make it through high school without additional support.
   
   
2. Focus on the common words, and have the child start creating a dictionary (think, care, important, case -because?, they're or they are, when, people, like, grandma, first, told, everything, say).
   
   
3. Provide a well structured graphic organizer that is specific to the prompt for this student. I would even include sentence starters that are specific to the topic. This child isn't even forming a complete sentence, there's no way to expect them to form a paragraph. How did they brainstorm for this activity? This child needs a lot more structure provided to them at the start to help them separate each idea into a sentence, then organize the sentences in a way that makes sense.
   
   If you let me know what the assignment was, I can give suggestions for how to scaffold it for this child.

This handwriting workbook for my daughter. :) We've been working on a lot of things with her and this would help a ton!

I'd get a D'Nealian Manuscript workbook, and provide handwriting instruction in it (which is like half cursive, half print). When you finish that book, you can move to D'Nealian Cursive.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/088012850X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Cursive-Grades-100-SeriesTM/dp/0880128518/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478463772&sr=8-1&keywords=contemporary+cursive

Here you go

http://www.amazon.com/Handwriting-Printing-Workbook-Brighter-Grades/dp/1483816427/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452878088&sr=1-1

$2.25 w/ prime shipping

My favorite horror film is The Grudge. I love Asian horror films :D

>Ooooo, look at me. I can wreckt anyone who mispells English. Go back to your homeland, dumbass!
That's you.

I live in America, which is my homeland, so where are you and your bad grammar trying to send me exactly?

I found you a book that might help. Illiteracy, while a problem, can definitely be solved. Here you go.