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At yesterday's prent teacher conference, EJ's teacher asked if we had heard about hand writing without tears.Of course I have.. . many of you have talked about it.

So, My question here is, what do I need to purchase to work on this with EJ. (his writing is absolutely horrid!). On the website, they show the workbook and then a teacher's guide. Do I need the teachers guide?

Thanks
Sheila

HWT is an evidence-based program. It can certainly help for kids with a variety of handwriting issues, but certainly not all.

First you need to know why his handwriting is horrid. Is it developmental, a lack of practice or instruction, or are there fine motor deficits? If the teacher is recommending such a program, then the teacher should be requesting the school OT do an evaluation. Is she trying to end-run the potential need for services?

I don't think she is overly concerned. It was something I had brought up about his writing. She mentioned the district does not even focus on handwriting anymore They used to do HWT in kinder but not any longer.

I would really recommend Handwriting without tears. My little one was in a full on Montessori for 2 years and ended up with horrid handwriting. He doesn't have any fine motor issues. I bought it and had him do 2 volumes during first grade, one page a day. They also do some handwriting in first and second grade (I switched him to our public school).
Now in second grade, his handwriting is pretty good! It isn't the best, but it's probably average to above average. Good enough! Just buy it on amazon.com, not very expensive.
If you long-term your child has horrid handwriting forever, it can affect- how they do on the SAT writing part of the test; affect how fast and well they can take notes in school, etc.

did you purchase the teachers guide and the workbook?

DS5 does HWT with his OT. The school does "trace this letter 40 times" method. They have not been at the same spot all year (school goes ABC order, HWT goes their own order). The letters covered by HWT are so much clearer. It really works for my kid.

I bought the teachers guide, the workbook, the tray and dough letters, the wood letters with the cards and mat, the little chalkboard, the big chalkboard, the tiny pencils, the chalk, the crayons, the iPad app and the tiny sponges. So yeah, I went a little nuts with it. I justified it with he is my oldest and the stuff is high quality so I can use it again with DS2.

One thing to keep in mind is that all of the extra stuff covers only uppercase letters. The workbook and teacher guide covers upper and lower case.

We tried HWT with our dysgraphic ds and had absolutely no success with it, so my first reaction is... if his teacher isn't concerned, and it's your concern... you might want to just try purchasing an inexpensive workbook for practice rather than worrying about buying into HWT (because it can get rather costly).

If you purchase HWT materials, fwiw, my opinion is you don't need to purchase the teachers manual - I would just start with the grade level workbooks.

Before I purchased anything though, I'd probably want to know a few things about how my ds was writing:

* Is his pencil grip normal?
* Is he using good posture?
=> If the answer is no to either of these, just working on these might improve his handwriting immensely without having to work on HWT or another set of hw drills at home).

* Is he using consistent letter formation?
* Is he forming letters the way he was taught in school?
=> If he's not, HWT or another handwriting program/practice at home will probably help (unless something else is going on such as a fine motor challenge or vision challenge etc).

* Does he complain of his hand hurting while he writes?
* Does he refuse to write for longer than a minute or so?
* Does he have uneven pencil pressure, do his papers end up crumpled up?
* Is he reversing letters?
=> If he's doing any of this, it might be developmentally age-appropriate, or it could be symptoms of dysgraphia - and I'd want a screening to help determine if there is an issue before trying out HWT etc.

Last thing, does his handwriting look really poor when you compare it to other kids' hw in his class at school? If not, honestly I probably wouldn't worry about it too much unless he actually enjoys the extra work at home. Our elementary did not do much hw practice after K/1 until learning cursive in 4th grade. For the typically developing kids, there was a wide range of neatness of appearance of their handwriting up through most of third grade, but most kids (kids who were consistently forming their letters and using ok grip/posture) made great strides in neatness etc once the amount of writing started to pick up in 3rd/4th grade.

Best wishes,

polarbear

My DS did HWT in K and then we got the workbook to do over the summer along with writing in a journal in order to not lose ground. He uses it in OT and it is helpful for letter formation. My DS does not make the same shape all of the time so it's very helpful. That being said for my DS it's also a lot about core strength and hand strength - we have in sports to help with that.

I didn't- I just bought volume 1 and 2 of whatever the handwriting one was. He did one page a day for 6-9 months and that was it. My son doesn't have dysgraphia or any fine motor issues- I felt he got little practice at the Montessori school that he was at. Obviously, if your child has other issues then you may need to do more.