Handwriting Y1

Aesop's The Fox and the Leopard Y1 G.

Handwriting for Year 1 is simple once I prepped it all for the year ahead of time. I used writing paper to copy the morals from Aesop's Fables we will be reading during the year--just a sentence and the story title really. I numbered them, put them in clear plastic sleeves, and spiral bound a separate writing tablet for beginning writers.

So we read a fable to two, then she hangs the 1" folder over her bin, open to what one she is on, and copies it in pencil--despite requests for pen. (I've heard pens are a good incentive for 4th graders...) Compliments on and requests for best handwriting made an overnight difference in effort and apperance. Mockingbird loves to illustrate hers so I eventually allowed 10 min to copy, 20 to draw--whatever works, right! I ended up letting her use another writing tablet that has pages half blank and half lined. Periodically I'll ask her to mark her best word and she'll put stars on them.

I think we may have a graphic novelist in the making.

Handwriting Y3

What we have done for handwriting this year, that is transitioning from print to cursive is this:
For learning the letters we did something each day with one new letter

Monday--Draw new letter in the air with hand big. Trace the capital letter I've drawn on writing paper, and write some of her own.

Tuesday--Do the same thing with the lower-case letter.

Wednesday--Combine the letters with words using what letters have been learned so far.

Thursday--Do copywork of some exerpt from readings.

Once this is done for all 26 letters (26 weeks), I copied out several Children's songs (using words, not "song language") onto wide lined paper using 3 lines per capital, and skipping a line in between. Then I put them in clear plastic sleeves in her school binder, with notebook paper in between each.
Now she will trace them with a dry-erase marker (if needed) then copy on her own paper what she has just traced, maybe half a page a day. I know it is recommended to to exerpts from readings, but I found that it takes a lot of concentration to connect letters at first, and knowing what was coming up in short words is more doable--and as side benifit helps us hum our way through at least this bit of school work.