Tracing Is Practice With Guardrails, Not BusyworkNew!!
I've heard tracing dismissed as busywork more than once, usually by well-meaning people who assume real learning only happens when a child is generating something from scratch. I understand the instinct, but it misunderstands what tracing is doing developmentally, and it undersells a useful tool. The hidden work inside a traced line Handwriting isn't one […]
Five Quiet Minutes Can Change a Child’s HandwritingNew!!
Parents often tell me they feel like they should be doing more — a workbook, a structured curriculum, thirty minutes at the kitchen table every night. Then that plan lasts about four days before it collapses under its own weight, and they feel like they've failed at something. I want to make the opposite case: […]
Twenty Years of Kindergarten Changed How I See Letter ReversalsNew!!
I used to correct every reversed letter I saw. Early in my career, if a child wrote a backwards "b," I'd stop them, show them the right way, and have them redo it. I thought that was thoroughness. Twenty years later, I do almost none of that, and the shift in how I think about […]
Before the Pencil Grip: The Small Muscles That Make Writing PossibleNew!!
Parents ask me about pencil grip more than almost anything else. They've usually read that there's a "correct" grip — the tripod grip, thumb and first two fingers pinching the pencil near the tip — and they're worried their child is holding it wrong. Here's what I've learned after years of watching kids learn to […]
When a Child Writes Their Name Backwards, Start HereNew!!
The first time a parent shows me a paper with a backwards "S" in their child's name, they're usually apologizing for it. They slide it across the table like evidence of something gone wrong, and they want to know what they did — or didn't do. Almost always, the answer is: nothing. This is normal. […]