Essential Learning Products ELP0226 Handwriting Skills Simplified - Improving, Price/EA

I taught my daughter to print 'top to bottom' from a young age as the 34;experts34; suggest, but she'd naturally resort to 'bottom to top' while practicing and more importantly while writing on her own for fun. After a lot of frustration on both our parts, I figured her 'bottom-to-top' writing is neat and legible and that's what counted since it didn't seem to slow her down at all. I backed off and told myself that we all end up with our own writing style in the end anyway, and you couldn't even tell by looking at her work so it didn't seem worth the battle. A few years later, her occupational therapist noticed and thought it was a problem and wanted to work on it. Unfortunately, she was so used to writing that way that trying to switch it up again confused her, she started having to put too much thought into it and some things ended up squiggly or backwards, her spacing became erratic while she's never had a problem with that before. It reminded me of trying to force someone to write with their non-dominant hand. Since I had to overshadow her at home to keep things consistent she lost her desire to write for fun and did not want to write anywhere near me. This worried me so her OT decided it was probably too late to correct the habit and we probably wouldn't see an improvement at that point, so to just let her do what's comfortable. My daughter was left with confusion, frequent erasing, frustration and sloppier handwriting that wasn't improving on it's own. She opted to type instead of write whenever possible. I had to find something to help her independently. This workbook totally fit the bill. It begins with basic strokes- Top-to-bottom lines, Left-to-right lines, Backward circle, Forward circle, Slant-left line, Slant-right line, Top parts of circle, Bottom parts of circle. This helped her ease back into it without a fight because it wasn't the usual letters and words practice, it reminded her of 34;how to draw34; books that she still enjoys. (Also good for handwriting practice by the way.) The workbook shows a diagram of pencil position and paper position for a gentle reminder. Then it goes in to the letters and word practice- what I like is that they underline where to write it on the 3-lined paper to help with sizing and spacing. (No nagging from mom!) There's a review after every 4 letters with an evaluation box at the bottom of the page. The first evaluation is the dreaded 34;Top-to-Bottom Strokes34; with check boxes for both pupil evaluation and teacher evaluation. I didn't say a word about evaluating her work but she saw it and evaluated herself. Other evaluations are on Size, Spacing, Shape, and Slant. After the print practice with alphabetical letters and words, there's a page on printing numbers, then an introduction to cursive section. At the end of the workbook there is a review page to write each letter in four forms: lowercase and uppercase manuscript, and lowercase and uppercase cursive. I was happy to see the inclusion of cursive because I was able to flip through the workbook with her when it came in and point out that cursive writing is bottom-to-top. It seemed to restore some confidence in herself. The workbook is basic and can be boring, I can't say my daughter actually enjoys using it. I told her this is just for practice to help her get over the bump in the road and get comfortable writing again. This workbook made it possible to be able to say that and step back since it's thorough and self-correcting.