• Printable Worksheets
• Manuscript Tracing Worksheet
• Manuscript Font and Paper
• Fun Writing Practice for Preschoolers
• Slant Board Alternative
• Encouragement for Reluctant Writers

An amazing site to make your own handwriting worksheets, choose from a variety of styles.

Handwriting Worksheets
Free Cursive Printables

This is something very useful for visual learners, a visual thesaurus that works like a mind map. Includes an audio clip of the words and visual representations of word relationships and you can manipulate it. You can choose between a low cost online subscription or purchase a desktop version. Click the link below and type a word in at the top to try it. Worth a look!

VISUAL THESAURUS

I have been increasingly interested in using slant boards for the girls.

When I was in my elementary years, my school had the old slant desks complete with ink wells! I never realized what a blessing that was until I entered middle school and used flat desks, I found myself climbing up on my seat to sit on my feet so I could hunch over the desk to see what I was working on and to lesson the stress on my wrist.

Today you can purchase "slant boards" or "desk easels" in a variety of materials and ranging in price from $30 to $200 or more.

With 2 children home and being on a tight budget, we opted for a cheaper route! For $5 or less you can make your own, maybe even free if you have all the items already. All you need is a 4 inch binder and a few heavy duty black binder clips. That's it, you're ready to go!

Here is a picture of the one I made for my daughter after I caught her writing with her wrist bent (a sign of fatigue.) I didn't have a really large three ring binder, so I clipped a few together. To hold a paper or coloring book in place you can use the heavy duty black binder clips, glue a clipboard clip on the top or wrap a large rubber band around the one side of the binder. Try it and let me know how it works for you!

A friend of mine passed this Reading website along to me. It is heavy on the interactive side, all online. I'm not a huge fan of "screen time" as research shows it can interfere with brain development. (That is a whole other topic you can read a little about, click here.) But never the less, it is a good resource and has free printed materials along with the interactive ones. The company is called Starfall and you can visit their website HERE.

If you are having trouble getting your child to write?? Here is a resource that might help you!

I'm excited about this product, it looks like a lot of fun. Even if your children aren't writing yet, they might enjoy telling the stories!



From the Publisher:

Stoke the fires of your child's imagination and awaken the creative writer within! Featuring a teacher's guide and 19th-century black-and-white illustrations, this rich resource boasts over 65 "story-starters": narratives designed to suspend students in the middle of a predicament so that they can pick up a pen and determine what happens next! Ages 8 to 18

Here is a great resource for those of you who want to know what your children should be learning and when. It is a great resource if you would like to put your own curriculum together.

"Home Learning Year by Year" by Rebecca Rupp.
From the Publisher:

The integral subjects to be covered within each grade
Standards for knowledge that should be acquired by your child at each level
Recommended books to use as texts for every subject
Guidelines for the importance of each topic: which knowledge is essential and which is best for more expansive study based on your child's personal interests
Suggestions for how to sensitively approach less academic subjects, such as sex education and physical fitness

I LOVE this dry erase book! It's the first non-consumable activity book I've seen that is so much fun and keeps their interest for 15-20 minutes at a time. We use it with our reading and math program for writing practice. Use with Vis-a-Vis markers for easier cleaning.

More practice with Singapore Math. I altered one of the games, here the girls each have a stack of cards 0-10. I shuffled them and set aside 4 random cards in each set. Then gave the remaining cards to the girls. They each had to figure out which numbers were missing and write it on their board. Once they think they are done, I then display the 4 cards I removed and they can check their work. They had a lot of fun with this one and kept asking me to "do it again!"

Download the font first, then this document to customize copy work for your child. You'll notice that you need to do a little "finagling" to get it to line up just right… But it works.

Font:
http://www.abstractfonts.com/font/3882

Document:
http://www.photosavvy.com/images/writingpaper.doc