Spencerian handwriting

[Shawna]

Does anyone have any experience with the Spencerian Penmanship? I saw it today and was thinking about it for my older son..he is 14 and his handwriting is....not very good! it's not terribly awful...but could be much better! We have used A Reason For the last couple of years, but I think he just goes too fast...just curious if any of you knew of this and what your opinions were!! Thanks!

[Mom2Monkeys]

I have a child like that, though she is only 9. My fix may sound odd, but it makes sense...to me, at least! To help with her too fast handwriting, I'm starting her in Greek! See, odd...right? My thinking is that the letters are unfamilar, so she will have to slow down and pay close attention to write them. I'm hoping this will improve her english handwriting as well. It think it would have the same effect as Spencerian, since neither are everyday handwriting that we actually use. My thought about the spencerian, is that it's fancy, though still familiar, so my dd would still likely "breeze through". I can say that her handwriting improves greatly when she is doing a notebooking page for HOD b/c she wants it to look great.

Oh, and something that will slow him down and possibly make writing my fluid at the same time, is changing his grip. DD's hand tires and her writing gets sloppy. So I changed her pencil grip to be between the index and middle finger instead of thumb and index. I have arthritis in my hands and this is the grip I use often to alleviate some fatigue when writing. She loves this grip and it's made a big difference in her writing. It makes it slower, but neater, and no fatigue!

Sorry if this reply is choppy...I had a dozen interruptions while trying to write it!

[Shawna]

Not choppy to me... I type and read with distractions, so it's normal for me!! LOL!!!