As a homeschool mom who never dreamed (ever in her life) that she would homeschool, there are so many blessings in homeschooling that have surprised me. However, the one that hasn't surprised me, because I've been a Language Arts/English Literature teacher for a decade in public schools and universities, is that teaching my children to read was incredibly magical. But it was a very different experience with my kids based on their different learning styles and also...and the purpose of this blog...on their different perspectives of handwriting.

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The oldest daughter loved her handwriting book. She completed two books in a year. She carefully traced each letter, drew letters on everything. We started homeschooling in the spring of 2020 because of COVID. When we started learning at home, I realized that she didn't actually know all of her letters, so I ended up buying a curriculum because the packets dropped off at my door were great, but they were not targeting the letters she didn't know. She learned her letters, she kept doing handwriting, and suddenly in August she read her first book. She started reading in a super stressful week, the first week I went back to teaching, and her reading was and still is a bright spot during that time.

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My son is an auditory learner (where my daughter is interpersonal, conversations help her thrive). This meant that we would read one of his books one time, and he would memorize the book. It was so frustrating because he refused to try to identify letters, make the sound, and sound out the word. He would just start shouting out words (sometimes so random), but he would remember the story well enough, look at the pictures, and usually guess the word. I would make him read with his finger point at the word, but he would get frustrated. He started saying he didn't like English. He loved, loved, loved for me to read to him (as an auditory learner, of course he did!). He also hated to do his handwriting. The pencil grip was awkward for him, and it was slow work, too slow for him. I didn't fight him on it as much as I wanted to fight him on it, but I did make him do it. I didn't hover over him. My daughter didn't need me to hover, so I took the same standoffish approach to him.

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But then I read that handwriting helps children slow down and focus on the shape of the letter, to really be able to identify the letter. I felt the pang of guilt that I wasn't doing enough, and we planned over the summer when I was off that he and I would do white board work on handwriting. He was excited for it, actually. So we started with numbers. Then we did five or so letters at a time. We didn't do it every day, and quicker than I expected, he was over it, but his reading immediately improved, and he was willing to sound out letters suddenly. His handwriting book still frustrated him, but the improvement was obvious and immediate in his reading.

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So, we talked about how his handwriting work had improved his reading. He loved the positive affirmation, and now he takes great pride in crafting letters for handwriting. He's attentive to the midline and the baseline. He's also attentive to where he places his pencil to start writing a letter. Every once in a while he gets irritated at my hovering, but we both learned that he actually needed someone over his shoulder both praising and correcting.

The most important lesson in this was learning that the fundamentals of handwriting really support the foundations of reading. Rather than memorizing the shapes of words, like "bed" that has a distinct overall shape, he knows that letters and pairs of letters make a sound, form a phoneme. Perhaps the most impactful to his life is learning that doing the little things exactly right is sometimes very important. It will be paradoxically important to also learn that in some other things "good enough is good enough" -- but not when it comes to learning and practicing handwriting.