Handwriting WITHOUT Tears

Arianna taught herself to write when she was 2 years old.  Great for then but now she is having to learn correct letter formation.  She writes very well but not necessarily efficient. A lower case a is 3 steps for her to write.  She draws little tails on the lower case a and u. 

Enter Handwriting without tears.  We purchased the 1st Grade handwriting without tears to help her with correct letter formation to help her be more efficient for the upcoming years of paragraph writing.  Well we started yesterday and guess what…There were TEARS!  She was so frustrated with how to hold her pencil that she was in tears. 

I have a difficult time teaching her the correct way as I was taught by a left handed person.  I hold my pencil just like a left hander and I remember in 3rd grade getting so frustrated because the teacher was mad that I couldn’t hold my pencil correctly.  Whenever I hold it like she would say, I couldn’t write.  Ari has the same problem but she holds in her very own way. 

After the tears began, Ari couldn’t even remember how she normally holds a pencil.  She was using the fisted grip. We kept dropping the pencil and just doing pencil pick ups but to no avail. 

I closed the book and said look Ari the book says without Tears.  You can’t have tears when doing this:) That made her laugh.   I told her that she can hold it the way she always does and we would just work on letter formation instead of worrying about how to hold a pencil.  We learned the frog jump letter formations (E, F, B, D, R, P, N, M). 

I am also beginning the Handwriting without Tears Pre-K with Ryan.  I like that it uses multi-sensory approach.  Today we played with the wood pieces (little line, big line, little curve, big curve).  Ryan enjoyed playing with these.