Most workbooks feature dot-to-dot practice for writing letters. They shouldn’t. Why? The answer is obvious if you know how to teach handwriting. The biggest problem is that so few people understand how children learn to write, and what gets in their way.
There are 3 stages of learning: imitating an adult, copying printed materials, and independently writing a letter. When the first stage of instruction is too short, poorly attended to (imagine a distracting preschool room) or nonexistent (“go practice at the writing table during your free period”), children end up drawing their letters, unaware of how letters are correctly constructed. Dot-to-dot worksheets encourage drawing letters. They do a very poor job of teaching correct formation and a good job of encouraging bad habits in handwriting.
Dot-to-dot worksheets, even the ones with a starting dot or arrow, cannot be followed correctly by most very young children. Start and sequence of writing strokes is essential to creating automaticity and control. Young children look at the letter “a” in the same way I look at a Chinese character or a hieroglyph. I could probably copy it, but I have no idea which lines make a single stroke, which to write first, second and third, and no sense that it should be similar to other characters. Children really don’t follow a tiny arrow or understand that numbering the strokes means that a tiny number two at the top means “This is your second stroke”. Older children do, but they aren’t the ones laboring over the dot-to-dot letter pages. There is a better way.
To make my point clear, look at the letters that Handwriting Without Tears calls the “magic c letters”: c, o, a, d, and g. By the way, are you wondering why “q” isn’t in the group, since it is formed in a similar manner? They add “q” later in instruction, due to the potential confusion with “g”,which is a more commonly used letter in English. I have seen a single child write the letter “c” made starting at the baseline and curving up, then make the letter “o” correctly by first writing a “c”, and then write letters “a”, “g” and “d” by drawing circles and adding straight or curved lines.
This method of letter formation never looks neat once children have to write full sentences with some speed. It can’t look good, as the pencil control required to write well with these strategies is too challenging for young children once they have to write more than a few letters. Ooops! Where did they come up with all those different methods of writing letters that should be made by starting with the letter “c” and then continuing to form the specific letter? They figured it out for themselves, since no one was watching!
The “Magic C” approach is brilliant because it is simple to recall and it creates control and automaticity, two hallmarks of legible handwriting. Dot-to-dot writing leads children down a path riddled with possible bad habits. Want a terrific HWT book for your preschool child that is advanced, or your struggling kindergartener? Check out KickStart Kindergarten: Get Your Child Ready for Kindergarten Writing The Easy Way!.
What about tracing? Well, I am not a fan of tracing letters or numbers, but I do use tracing for fun. Read Try “Rainbow Tracing” to Build Pre-Writing Skills With Creativity to learn more.
So, are dot-to-dot pictures a terrible idea?
Not at all. I love the way children have to control pencil strokes and visually scan the page for the connecting number or letter. They are great visual-motor fun. There are complex dot-to-dot pictures with over 200 dots that really challenge kindergarteners who can count.
Just don’t teach writing letters and numbers this way!
