Collins Easy Learning Handwriting Practice

Well thank goodness the half term holiday is over, well until the easter break anyway!

I am truly sick and tired of writing out reams of sums and doing spelling tests for my daughter. I know I shouldn't complain but I am not academic myself, so encouraging my children to be interested in something I hated at school is not the easiest of tasks, this is where the product I will now review comes into play.

The product I ...
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On a trip to my local Asda and after daring to venture down the toy aisle to see the sale rail that is always situated opposite, I found a selection of books aimed at children of all ages, this was one of the books there.

If you are at all familiar with school curriculum you will already be aware of this fact, your child spends time and effort to perfect there handwriting, encouraged to write perfectly formed letters, for ... more

Well thank goodness the half term holiday is over, well until the easter break anyway!

I am truly sick and tired of writing out reams of sums and doing spelling tests for my daughter. I know I shouldn't complain but I am not academic myself, so encouraging my children to be interested in something I hated at school is not the easiest of tasks, this is where the product I will now review comes into play.

The product I will now review is "Collins easy learning handwriting practise" .

On a trip to my local Asda and after daring to venture down the toy aisle to see the sale rail that is always situated opposite, I found a selection of books aimed at children of all ages, this was one of the books there.

If you are at all familiar with school curriculum you will already be aware of this fact, your child spends time and effort to perfect there handwriting, encouraged to write perfectly formed letters, for your teacher then inform you that around the age of 7, they have to learn how to write in joined up writing! My daughter has handwriting like myself, decipherable if the time and effort has been put into the execution, but if rushed and joined it becomes an entirely different language altogether!

Advice given to me from her teacher to try and remedy this was to encourage her to copy paragraphs from a story book, and write them in her best joined up handwriting.

This book is literally the first step your child should take before writing more than a sentence in joined up writing.

The book starts with the complete basics of handwriting, Letter formation.

On the first page there are all the "small letters", these are letters that when written only fill a single lined space, these include a, c, m, w, z... etc.
Each letter is written in bubble writing, with the inside of the letter having an arrow showing the child the best way to write the letter, follow the arrow and hey presto.
The instruction for this section is simply "trace and write" providing more line space for you to duplicate the specific letter.

The next pages show you the same format of writing practise but uses the "tall letters", which are the letters that extend above the line above, ie b, d, h, k...etc.
And finally the "descenders" which are considered the hardest letters to learn and form, these the letters that have tails, so to speak, ie g, j, p, q and y.

The next section is the reason the book was purchased, basic joined up writing.
This page starts with a simple word, "in", at the top of the page there is a large bubble writing version of the word, with again the arrows in the middle to show the best way to write the word and join the letters. You are told to start at the red dot which is located at the top of the "I" under the letters dot and follow the arrows.

This theme is duplicated on every page with a different two lettered word to practise writing, then on the joining page there is a list of words with the first word incorporating the afore practised word. Under that is a list of small words to practise writing, next to each word is a colourful picture to represent it.

Finally there is a practise sentence trying to incorporate every word on the practise list.

Near the end of the book, once the child is more confident there are some practise writing tests to try, these include a party invitation, a list of the days of the week, colours, numbers 1 - 20and finally a thank you letter, all but the thank you letter has the words already there ready for the child to trace. The letter is blank thus encouraging your child to perform the whole task themselves.

There a few other sub sections, including the specific letters of the alphabet that are called "break letters", this means that they don't join to any other letters, see I didn't know that, my letters, whatever they are join to every other! LOL.

This book was purchased as part of a deal at Asda, this was 2 for £3.00, so this was purchased and also a book for my son (review coming soon!).

This is a wonderful book that my daughter has truly enjoyed working her way through, there has been a definite improvement to the quality of her writing, and due to the "pen license" scheme that is run at my daughters school, she is hoping her writing to have improved sufficiently over the holiday to receive her license.

There are a good few books available in this range these are -

The year by year books - these are specifically designed to help support school learning, these are a range of maths and English workbooks, starting from age 4-5 and working it's way up to 9-10.

There are then the skills books, which this book is part of, they are books aimed at certain skills, ie hand writing, through to times tables.

Finally there are books for revision aimed at 10-11 years old, these are English, maths and science revision.

These are invaluable books, that make learning fun and memorable, thus encouraging and enhancing your child's knowledge and abilities.

So recommended.....Yes!

For more information on the titles mentioned visit - www.collins.co.uk

Thanks for reading x 

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