bluemagic, I meant formation as she is direction and order. She used to do her O and 0 clockwise and it took almost a year to get that fixed because we let it go when she was younger. Now she is okay with O and 0 but she writes some lines from right to left rather than right to left. I know it's a minor detail and her handwriting is more than legible and the end product is correct so I shouldn't be such a perfectionist but every time she writes T from right to left, it drives me CRAZY. Now that I think about it, maybe she's doing it on purpose because she knows I'd overreact.
So I thought about this because I wasn't sure why it matters that you write an O or 0 clockwise or counter-clockwise. Perplexed me a bit. And probably most handwriting books will say this is the correct method. But until I thought about it a bit I couldn't figure out why it would be "better". Writing a cursive "o" would seem easier clockwise than counterclockwise. My guess is there is history behind this more than ergonomics. That once upon a time writing right to left, and the O's counter clockwise helped prevent smearing of the ink when writing with ones right hand with a fountain pen. Modern pens, crayons, pencils this is a lot less necessary.
And he's much more eager to write now that he has the freedom of doing it his way that he finds easier. I never learned to write number 8 the correct way. I've always done it with two "o" on top of each other. And when I saw he was struggling with 8, I showed him my way and he couldn't be happier. We might try cursive next semester just because it seems more natural to me than using print such young age.