Anyone have ideas on how to teach nicer handwriting? My daugter (10yrs) handwriting is sloppier than I like, but I do not know how to make it nicer. She does a lot of practice writing, but still sloppy 
Write some text on a white board in permanent marker. Then have her trace it accurately with a white board marker. Only the bits that she goes over exactly will rub out afterwards. Self correcting 
Do a check first!
Also a basic handwriting book is good, but may be hard to get her interested in completing it. Writing doesnāt necessarily improve neatness. It needs to be writing that resets the bad habits.
I have used some free make your own handwriting worksheets ( google!). If the text is interesting, about them or funny and nonsense most kids will happily trace it.
Lastly itās kind of important at that age that they actually want to improve their handwriting. It wouldnt be fun getting a ten year old who didnāt care to be neater.
Does she even have a good grip?
I only ask because when I met my wife in college (!) I noticed she had the worst pencil grip I ever saw. I couldnāt help but comment about it, ask her about it, and generally chaff her about it. It turned out, none of her teachers ever taught her how to grip a pen or pencil. Now that sheās a teacher, she makes sure to instruct the kiddos on proper grip.
To answer your question generally, if the grip is there, itās probably a matter of devoted attention to improvingā¦ however you can get her to do it.
I would probably start right at the beginning.
- Check pencil grip.
- Check that she is seated correctly - feet on the floor facing the front with a bit of space between her tummy and the table (enough to put a kitten on her lap)
- Is she positioning the paper correctly - (slanted with the bottom left corner down for a right hander)
- Does she use her non writing hand correctly to anchor the paper.
- Is her letter formation correct? - this is hard to check in a 10 year old but watch how she is writing - do all letters start at the top and work down. You will need to watch a good many times to make sure every letter is being correctly formed.
- Is she leaving good spacing between her words? - this is one of the easiest things to correct and makes a big difference in neatness even if you do not fix the rest of it.
- Are her letters the correct height? - writing between lines will help this - for an āhā - the middle of the letter must be the same height as the top which is why using lined paper helps so much as the lines are all even.
Maybe if you posted a picture of what you are seeing (of her writing itself) it would be easier to help - you could even post a picture of how she is sitting and holding her pencil (if she will let you!)
Until you know what is causing the problems (and it is likely a multitude of these issues) then I would NOT get her to trace things - tracing is there for practicing good habits but cannot fix a problem and will often make things worse if she just practices bad habits while getting something that looks āgood enough.ā
I think I prefer to give my daughter instead of whiteboard, she should write on the tracing line practice again. Try to print out some words using Ms. Word and ask her to follow the dots to practice. Make fun like prepare 2 similar worksheet and one with full word character for example : " I love to study" and the other one with : " I lo_e t_ S__dy " ask her to compare before and after and guess how she could practice as similar.
Another idea is using the make a lot of worksheet of only on words : let say : education in different front type and ask her to follow the tracing lines. after finished the handwriting. ask her to choice the best which she likes. Make her like to write the beautiful word first. and ask her to write A-Z again of her lovely front type. this may be help herā¦ as I know ā¦ if I love something I will follow instead of asking by my parent.
Try itā¦ but must be patient lol
I have blog on move on how to educate your kidā¦ you could have a look and try to your kidsā¦
http://littlemommy2012.blogspot.com/
If the above doesnāt work you could try having her make the letters in clay. Roll out clay/playdough āsnakesā and then form the letters. This works well with children that are learning to print so I think it would work for cursive too.
http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/acatalog/handi-writer.html#a604 -you could try something like this. I just ordered some stuff from this site for my lefty son, but I believe this handi-writer can be for left or right use. My son has a difficult time with writing so we are trying some new things like positioning the paper correctly and writing letters differently as instructed by items on this site.