This isn’t about the grade “C”.
It is about the benefit of writing a circle by starting with the letter “C”. I just taught a dad how to build his son’s handwriting skills without teaching him any letters or numbers. His son will be starting kindergarten in the fall, and although there were few worksheets in preschool, we all know he will get lots of worksheets in September. Many of those will ask him to circle the correct answer. If this child and his dad use my suggestion on practice sheets this summer, he will be improving his pencil control and start/sequence automaticity for handwriting. Without ever writing a word.
All he needs to do is to circle the target on his worksheet by writing a letter “C” around it, then continuing the stroke from the bottom to the top to close the circle. Handwriting Without Tears talks about the “magic c”. It is pretty magical the way that children who begin letters this way develop faster formation recall and better speed/control for “O”, “G”, and “Q” in preschool, and “a”, “d”, “g”, “o”, and “q” in kindergarten. The initial formation of a “c” for these letters is exactly how HWT’s preschool book teaches drawing a circle. Making the leap from drawing circles to circling answers on classroom worksheets sometimes gets lost in translation. It shouldn’t.
Combining motor skills with visual search/discrimination,literacy and math skills on a worksheet is where the rubber meets the road in kindergarten. You will start to see which kids are mastering writing and which are struggling with one or more components. Many of my kids will look pretty good with one-on-one instruction in letter formation, but then when perceptual skills, spelling and line placement are expected, they crumble. If their start/sequence and formation is rock-solid, it frees up attention for learning where and how to look, thinking about the correct answer, and marking it with a circle or writing a response.
Children that start a circle on the bottom or the side of a target, or start at the top and turn to the right side (a backward “C”), will then have to think briefly every time they begin writing one of these curved letters. It isn’t automatic for them. Every type of manuscript writing will start these letters in the same manner, so if your school teaches D’Nealian or Zaner-Bloser, and not HWT, you are still following the correct formation.
Don’t worry about letters and numbers that reverse this pattern, like “D’ and “3”. When you use the HTW chalkboards or Gray Block Paper, you avoid reversing these letters. The magic “c” letters appear more frequently as a group in early literacy (excepting “Q q”) so they are more essential for legibility at this early stage. All will be well.
Preschool is the perfect time to introduce this idea of using a “C” to circle things, since most kids are excited but a bit nervous about making it in the big time. Teaching them that circling their answer this way is the more “grown-up” choice makes them feel confident and mature. You don’t have to mention the part about how much better it is for their writing.
