Handwriting without tears

Hi, K,

I have the book at home and I think it looks great. That should be a great program to teach any child handwriting. I guess my question would be, how did they diagnose a kindergartener as dyslexic? What therapy will be used for the dyslexia since neither HWT or Singapore math have anything to do with dyslexia? Earobics is good. We use that, too.

Janis

I am both an OT and a parent of a child with significant fine motor and writing difficulties. I took the HWT class just so I could learn it to teach him. It is an excellent program, very easy to learn, very easy to teach and so much easier for the child. More and more classes at our school are using it, I wish they would just switch over to it district wide. It makes so much more sense than D’Anelian which is what our school uses.

It is very simple to learn and as long as you have the instructor book you will have no problem. Be sure you get a workbook for him as well. The cursive is also easy. I was able to reteach my child this program. It stopped all reversals and starting letters at the wrong place. You may want to buy a ream of paper. the paper is 2 line paper and is key to learning the program. But there are blank pages in the workbook you could use as well.

By the way, the program emphasizes only 5 minutes of practice a day. Fifteen minutes a day of practice may be too much. I taught new letters nearly everyday since my son was able to do that, but we still kept the practice very short.
Good luck

His testing was reviewed by a neuropsycologist and that was her diagnosis. Nothing is being done right now because we are still trying to determine what he needs.

He attends private school and therefore he is funded through the school district we live in. They don’t really believe that five-six year olds need any help. That is why I went to the independent Doctor and that is why I am trying to work with him over the summer.

K.

Thanks for the extra suggestions!!

I am only planning on 5 min a day of HWT but would also like to spend another 10 or so minutes on some games. I have several books by Peggy Kaye, Games for Learning, GAmes for Math, and Games for Reading. We were using them before and took a break. When we used them before they were a huge success because he didn’t realize he was learning!!

I just don’t want to overload him. Since it is summer I don’t want him to think it is still school time!

Thanks
K.

I have a book that I will strongly suggest to you:

“Reading Reflex” by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness (about $12 form Amazon)

It has been highly successful in teaching dyslexic and typical children to read. I learned about it on this site and went for training this spring. Don’t wait until your little boy gets behind…get the book and start working with him now. :-)

Janis

We tried HWT cursive and print version. Didn’t do a thing to improve my son’s handwriting. My son is 12,tried hmm,aprox. 7 or 8 different programs. He had a year of OT. The OT,bless her heart just didn’t know what to do anymore. I will never forget her excitement just coming from a HWT conference,she had already worked about 6 months or so with my son,and was puzzled,because all the practice in the world hadn’t improved his letter reversals,or his spacing problem. She even spoke personally to the maker of the program specificly about my son,the developer told her this would do it,this would help my son. Well,it didn’t. I told her,”listen we have tried many programs and we did HWT before,I am not sure this is the way to go”. She did,we did. He was doing pretty good with the fact that HWT allows you to start wherever you want to form the letter. The program design is all about survival.The goal is to make a legible letter.( huge problem for my kid,he just couldn’t seem to do the start here,and go down here and loop around kind of way,he did it the opposite way, always) In essence it sounds like a pretty good thought. But sure enough he would out of the blue reverse the letter,and in class writing is still, to this day, illegible. One thing that helped letter reversals was writing on the bathroom wall,believe it or not. He would spray shaving cream and write the letter on the wall big,using is large muscles. He enjoyed it,and it actually made a difference,and it only cost the price of a lot of cans of shaving cream. He would do this in his shower every night.The imprint of what the letter looks like had to be imprinted in his mind. Once he started doing projects making the letters in playdoh,using candle wicks and tracing the printed letter( you wrap the candle wick around the letter making loops etc.),writing in sand,etc. this helps more than anything in helping with reversals,the legibility is still poor,okay beyond poor,illegible. Can’t say I was too terribly impressed with HWT,any program like this,just didn’t seem to make a huge impact. I would consider this if he is having troubles like this. If he writes the letters correctly but just can’t seem to keep it even,or it is messy,this program might be the trick,if he is having reversals,I would doing something else.Just my opinion

Sounds like the Montessori primary program: lots and lots of writing in shaving cream, lots and lots of writing in sand, lots of sandpaper letter tracing.

Unfortunately I’ve had many a kid who HAS done all of this, plus daily OT, and still not be able to write legibly.

For those kids, the computer is eventually (once they’re past learning how to keyboard) the greatest gift.

I used HWT with both my LD 10 yr old son and my non LD 5 year old daughter. It worked beautifully for the little one—

For my son, the thing that helped the most w/ this program was the paper. We got the extra paper and he used it for all homework assignments. We even cut and pasted the paper into his exercise books. Helped a lot w/ size. As for formation and reversal, we actually had success w/ daily practice of HWT and use of a sand tray. I would also write letters on his back and he would write what he thought they were on a whiteboard. He is now 4th grade and writing alot, very nicely when he has to—still messy when he is in a hurry. Also, he has done alot of body work and the speed seemed really to coincide with increased upper body strength. When his chest filled out, his handwriting improved and sped up……credit swimming and push ups required by his Tae kwan do Master.

So, we had a positive experience—but I am not sure how much of it was the program and how much was his development and the more multi sensory methods.

Right Joan! I got one of those kids. Although it helped reversals,it didn’t improve legibility. He uses a laptop most definitely.

His writing isn’t all that illegible now. He rights fairly well but you can see that he is questioning himself while writing becuase he has to stop and start the same letter a lot. There are a lot of breaks in the letters.

His reversals are not to bad but they do exist. He reverses numbers constantly. I don’t think it will hurt him to work with the program over the summer in combination with the computer and games. I think it will boost his confidence that he can write and learn letters.

Thanks
K.

My son has done HWT for 2 yrs.now(cursive). We didn’t bother with print since it was so hard to begin with. He loved the program and can at least write legibly now. We used the slate method where I would write the letter and let him watch then he would trace the letter with a wet sponge then he would write the letter. It worked great for him and he saw such improvement quickly that he didn’t get bored with it. He wasn’t proficient after 1 yr. so we bought the next book and practiced this yr. also. He is very proud that he can write so nicely now. Hope this helps. My son is ADHD,LD also.

How old was your son when you began??

Does this program also helps with letter recognition??

K.

If you use HWT in conjunction with some sensory integration OT for the visual, motor and fine motor problems it will help. My daughter, when she began SI OT wrote : The farmer loves pigs Th efa rme rlo vesp ig s. After 15 months, her spacing is fine, etc. Part of it developmental, but the intensive therapy moved things along at a faster clip.

Letter recognition is not taught by HWT. If your child is “dyslexic” only a multisensory, sequential program like Lindamood Bell, Orton Gillingham or Wilson is going to work. The public school usually does not provide this kind of tutoring. I can’t imagine anyone saying they don’t do anything for a 5-6 year old dyslexic. Early intervention is crucial. My daughter, was evaluated, at age 7, and is reading at and above grade level currently after LMB tutoring 2x wkly. Be careful with what the public school offers. If your child is dyslexic, chances are it’s not going to help much. Don’t wait too long before getting intervention. If a child gets to 4th grade and they’re still behind, the gap begins to widen significantly after that time and sometimes they never catch up. I have a friend, currently who has a gifted dyslexic son who has a genius IQ, in 9th grade and reading at a 4th grade level.