At what age does printing become "nice"?

[jduggan]

My daughter will be 6 in a few weeks, her at home learning is going very well, her and I are both enjoying homeschooling.

However, her printing has room for improvement! I suspect it's age-related, and I'd like any insight into the natural progression of printing.
Right now, she is printing very large letters, some capitals, some lower case, and forming certain letters incorrectly. She just started spacing the words so it didn't all run into one long sentence. Mostly it just looks plain sloppy. Should I be reminding her about these things or do they resolve naturally? Personally, I don't mind her writing being this way, especially if it's age appropriate, and I don't nag her about it as to not distract from what she is printing about, but I do wonder sometimes if I made more effort for her to practice it, it would improve.

Did anyone notice a certain age where the printing generally straightened out on it's own, or should I be looking for ways to encourage correct form, as it will not develop on it's own?

Thanks for any ideas or experience you may have on this.

[canuckgal]

I think it depends on alot of things.

FWIW, I am a relaxed/eclectic/unschooler type with a child (my REDheaded one of course LOL!) who is perfectionistic and very very hard on herself when it comes to her "output"...drawing, writing, etc. I found out quickly those writing workbooks with the dotted guide lines and daily writing practice (when the writing didn't have an immediate purpose for her) were not a good fit...giving her white boards, easels, etc and anything unlined worked better as she was so stressed trying to make it look like "the book". Also, she learned her letters much better in "context" like making grocery lists, cartoons, etc. I find that dd's (9) writing has improved especially in the last year or two. She can write tiny and neat when she wants to but it is very very fatiguing for her. She still tends to mix in some capital and small letters at times, but that is improving. I know she does alot less writing daily than her pub school friends, but when I see some of them so resistant to writing already in 3rd-4th grade I feel for us our approach is worth it, even though I get a bit nervous sometimes over her not writing huge pages of stuff.

Ds is another story, he has some speech and motor delays caused by a gene duplication, and still needs some fine motor work as evidenced by the fact we are still working on his pencil grip, and he tends to lift his wrist and forearm off the page (so as to use the stronger core muscles to compensate for the fine motor delay) and needs a small candy or something to tuck under his last 2 fingers so he doesn't use them on the pencil. (He goes to OT and physiotherapy once a month for ideas for me). He is at the stage he is only NOW willing to do dot to dots, window writer markers, making playdough letters, etc and is nowhere near ready to do lots of writing practice...there is so much other things we need to work on with him first to improve his fine motor skills.

Interestingly enough, his OT told me she feels writing is expected at too early an age (like having practicing by 3-4 yr olds) when alot of the time they need painting on a vertical surface, easels, beading and even more gross motor stuff/movements, etc instead of practicing letters, and that this push for early writing maybe serves the school's purpose, not the child's. I thought that was interesting coming from an OT who works in the schools.

[lach]

It's mostly practice and hand strength, which are both largely age related and 6 is early. Many kids aren't even really ready to write at 6.

With students I've taught in the past I've encouraged their very neatest handwriting on whatever passed for final projects, but made no fuss whatsoever about drafts, worksheets, minor things that we were doing. I wanted them to aspire to doing their best job, but felt that constant nagging was counter-productive. So I settled on just occasional nagging (the occasions being when we were working on some sort of final project) and I don't think I ever had a student balk at that: even ones who would give me serious attitude if I so much as suggested that their handwriting on worksheets was illegible. I also don't think that it's ever too young to teach that on some things you want to put on your best face... so you don't end up with one of those young adults who write in text-speak in an email to their boss or something

[Daffodil]

My DD is about a year older than yours. Over the last year, I've been wondering how much I should try to teach her about the "correct" way to form letters, and how much I should let her just figure it out on her own. This fall, I finally decided it would be helpful to explicitly teach her how to form all the lowercase letters, and I think that was a good decision. Before we started on that, she was reluctant to use lowercase letters, and had funny, inefficient ways of forming a lot of them. Now, she's a lot more comfortable printing in lowercase, and she chooses to use lowercase letters on her own, which she never used to do. And her printing is neater. I think printing probably just naturally gets neater and smaller as kids get older, but after seeing how helpful it was for my daughter, I've decided some instruction in letter formation can be a good idea.

I didn't have DD go through a whole handwriting curriculum, or practice pages of each letter. I just went through the alphabet, showing her about 3 letters at a time, and encouraging her to practice writing a few short words including those letters. At the start of one session, I'd have her practice some of the letters she'd already learned. So the whole thing probably took 9 days or so, maybe 10-15 minutes per session.

[Mom979902]

I don't know if there is an age when they automatically get better at handwriting. I think it is more individual than age related. IMO, 6 yrs old is too soon to expect much neatness. My 7 yr old still puts the dots to separate her words in a sentence.

We mostly unschool(don't care for labels), so I have let my DDs' handwriting take its natural course. My 10 yr old writes much neater than my 12 yr old b/c neatness is important to her, although she [still?] mixes capitals and lower case in words. My 12 yo and I are starting to work on handwriting together to try to get it a bit neater. She agrees it's a bit hard to read, and she writes some letters in a really inefficient manner. For instance, she starts all of her letters from the bottom. She was in school for 2.5 yrs and learned to write in school, so her strange handwriting wasn't b/c she didn't have lessons in it.

[jduggan]

I just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful replies, your thoughts on the matter really jive with what I was leaning towards anyway. 6 yrs old is LITTLE imo, and I'm not interested on nagging about something that will generally improve on it's own, with a little direction.

thanks for taking the time to respond! back to lurking

[jlpumkin]

thanks for the thread - I was wondering the same thing... I was sort of beating myself up that we don't do handwriting...

[bobandjess99]

Well...I'm 31.....and still waiting for my handwriting to become legible...lol.

But really, give it more time.