Thanks for practising handwriting at home! The main things to help your kids with their handwriting is making use their hands are strong. We call them 'hulk hands'. As this generation are growing up with so many online learning devices, it is so important that the muscles in their little hands continue to grow and be used. To help their hands to become strong (fine motor), their whole body strength (gross motor) should be practised. In class, we practise balancing on one leg with our hands above our head like a pencil. Once our body is warmed up, we bend and stretch our fingers, warming the muscles up. Some ways your child's fine motor skills can be helped is through playing with play dough, colouring, using pegs, scissors, tweezers, playing with lego, or threading beads.

At St James, uppercase letters are written in print (not joined), and lower case letters are cursive, leading in and out. In year 1, we focus on getting the lowercase letters written beautifully by themselves, only putting them into words with other letters that your child can independently write.If you would like to practise handwriting, the way your child is being taught can be seen in the powerpoint below. 

Miss Kemish has little sentences she says as you write these letters, and would be happy to share these with your child if there is a letter they are struggling with. Ask your child how to write the letter d in cursive, and they may say something like, 'flick up, around the dinosaurs bottom, up his tall neck, down to his feet.' for b, they might say 'flick up, down the laces to the heel, around the toe and flick. Saying this as you write the letter will help them to correctly write the letter the right way around (i.e. round first, then straight line for d, line first, then round for b).