6 Year Old Wants to Learn "Fancy" Writing

[bass chick]

So my son is 6 and prints all his letters fairly legibly when he wants to. For months he has been adding strokes and swirls to his letters to make them fancy but when he does that it is near impossible to tell what the letters are because he's fancied it up so much!!

I showed him cursive writing and he thought it was pretty cool and it would be "okay" to learn, but what he really wants is to learn pretty, fancy, letters. I'm thinking calligraphy but think he will just get frustrated by the thick vs thin part of the pen.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Perhaps a particular printing or writing font that I can show him? He really likes fancy-schmancy!!

[SundayCrepes]

Maybe he would like to learn one of these fonts http://www.educationalfontware.com/

[AAK]

My dd has this and loves it: 

http://www.amazon.com/Lettering-Crazy-Quirky-Style-Klutz/dp/157054428X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295389601&sr=8-1

I would encourage him do the Fancy writing for cards, titles and book covers, art projects, etc. and use printing when you need to be able to read it.

Amy

[cappuccinosmom]

I'd let him try calligraphy.  Really. 

They make "calligraphy" markers with different widths, also different colors, even gold and silver.  He might enjoy it, and if he's really into it, he will figure out the wide/narrow part very quickly.  If not, he'll just have fun with the colors and making his own "fancy" writing with the pens. 

[tammyw]

There are several Klutz books on fancy writing. My daughter loves hers!

[kittie313]

At 6yo I started learning calligraphy in ps when my 1st grade teacher realized that I needed something to do to keep me occupied for the 75% of the time that I had finished my work and was waiting on the class to catch up every day.  She approached my father about it, and once she had his approval she held me in at recess a couple days to teach me basic strokes with a calligraphy marker and then turned me loose with a chart of the style I was working on and a book of heavy paper (my dad gave her the money to buy the materials). Then in 3rd grade I was good enough that I was given a fountain pen with different color cartridges and tips to use for my calligraphy.

I say go for it with calligraphy, but teach a basic italic to start with and set the rule that it can only be done with the specific pens and tablet you buy for it (an artist drawing tablet would be a great thing for a starting calligrapher to write in, you can draw some lines on he pages for him to use as a guide for keeping neat rows if you like but its more about the weight of the paper, the marker ink won't bleed through an art tablet as easily)

[tankgirl73]

Maybe show him Penny Gardner's "Italics: Beautiful Handwriting for Children" and see if he likes that style?  Not sure what is more 'fancy' than cursive heh... Unless he'd really like to do the more traditional old-fashioned cursive than the boring modern style... There are some web resources for the fancier cursive styles, can't remember the official names for them off the top of my head but I'll see what I can dig up, I looked into this not long ago...

[tankgirl73]

There... Spencer was one of them!  There's a whole scanned book here, the authentic old thing:

http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/t/text/text-idx?idno=00a268620m;view=toc;c=nietz

It's not obvious, but you just click on the links under "Contents" to get to the pages.