HANDWRITING WITHOUT TEARS (HWT)
Does your child experience daily frustrations in the classroom and at home when asked to write letters and numbers? Does your child avoid handwriting activities? Is your child struggling to keep up with classroom curriculum because of sloppy or slow handwriting? Does your child avoid writing tasks in general? If any of the above descriptions fit your child, then Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) may be the perfect solution to engage your child’s interest through multisensory, easy-learning, and easy-teaching techniques. These techniques are used by experienced OT’s at Kids in Motion OT on a daily basis. These techniques are used to turn mundane tedious activities into child friendly activities to achieve maximum progress.
Jan Olsen created “Handwriting Without Tears” in 1977 to help her son who was overwhelmed by the task of handwriting in first grade. Jan used her occupational therapy training to develop strategies to facilitate proper handwriting development in her child. Her technique is widely known as easy-to-learn, easy-to-teach, and developmentally appropriate.
Handwriting Without Tears uses a set of wooden pieces to teach prewriting skills. The set of 26 pieces includes big and little lines and big and little curves which are used to form all of the letters in the alphabet.
The HWT workbook pages are simple and in black and white. The pages are deliberately designed to avoid visual perceptual confusion through distracting backgrounds.
The HWT worksheets are left-hand friendly. Each page has two copies of each word so that both right and left-handed children can view the word without being blocked by the hand which is writing.
HWT uses terminology which is child-friendly. Some terms include “frog jump letters,” “hills and valleys letters,” “kite string letters,”“ magic c," “up like a helicopter,” “bump at the top” and “slide down and bump.” The “Starting Corner” capital letters all start in the top left corner.
HWT starts with upper case letters since they are easier to shape, and it works its way through the lower case letters.
Sensory handwriting activities include asking the child to form the capital letters out of playdough. This activity also facilitates strengthening of hand muscles, while encouraging sensory input and proper letter formation.
Picture taken from: http://ariselifeskills.wordpress.com/category/attention-deficit-disorder/
References: Pre-K Teacher's Guide by Jan Olsen, OTR, 2004
Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten Teacher's Guide by Jan Olsen, OTR, 2003
