StartWrite 6 Handwriting Software for Creating Worksheets

It is true what they say about boys and terrible handwriting, my boys penmanship is atrocious! I have learned to decipher my 7 year old E Nut’s writing, and that was no small task, but it has been driving me crazy that half the time I have no idea what his homework says. He does his assignments, and then we go over it while I write things out correctly for him and he rewrites everything out. For years he has had trouble with his b’s and d’s, p’s and q’s and u’s and n’s. I have been making copies of the handwriting worksheets that we have in different workbooks and curriculums, and I have even, very unsuccessfully made my own handwriting worksheets. But nothing I have given him has been working for him.

Little Nut Nut is 4, and there is very little that we have for practicing his handwriting. He quickly went through all of his letters, there were very few actual letters to trace in his workbook. There are only a few letters to trace for each letter of the alphabet, and he is always asking for more.

Wing Nut has pretty good handwriting when it comes to manuscript style, but has been having a hard time with cursive.

A while back I was on one of my favorite blogs Chaos Appreciation and noticed a link for a software program called StartWrite for handwriting. I checked it out and thought I definitely needed to get it. I don’t know how long it was, but all sorts of things came up in this thing called life and I never got around to actually getting it. When I was visiting her site yesterday, I saw the banner again and jumped write on it. Heehee. As soon as I downloaded it, I started creating handwriting lessons. My poor kids, I have way too much fun teaching them and coming up with lessons.

E Nut has also had a terrible time with spelling, and therefore reading. He really wants to learn to read books like Harry Potter, but they are too advanced for him. His brother Wing Nut on the other hand was reading Harry Potter when he was 7 and had no troubles at all. E Nut gets so frustrated when things like reading and writing don’t click and I feel so bad for him, he tries so hard.

Yesterday E Nut was working on his spelling and having a terrible time writing out his words, and memorizing them. When I ran across StartWrite, it was perfect timing! I printed out his spelling lesson, he traced the lines and when it came time for his test, his handwriting had improved so much it was like I was looking at a different child’s work. I am so unbelievable impressed! Normally his spelling tests are full of backwards letters and close to 1/2 or more of his words are misspelled. For the first time ever, he got all of his spelling words correct.

Other things that I love about this program, in addition to basic manuscript and cursive writing, it also has color images that can be added to the pages for younger kids in preschool and kindergarten, numbers, money and clocks. I am still working through the keyboard to figure out which keys make which clock images, but the money was fairly basic and all of the coins are grouped together so that they keys on the keyboard will print out different groups of coins. Like 1 penny, 2 pennies, 3 pennies, all next to each other on the keypad.

So I am able to use this program for spelling, math, colors, and even history. I am printing out famous quotes from history for my children to trace. And that is only what I have found since yesterday! I can’t believe I haven’t been using this all this time. I seriously love this and I am so darn glad I was reminded about it yesterday! This is seriously one of my favorite homeschool tools I own!

Here are a few photos of some of the assignments I have printed out for the kids.