This paper has been more useful to older kids (6+) that I see for handwriting help than any other paper on the market, and almost any other tool Problems With Handwriting? You Need The Best Eraser , Great Mechanical Pencils Can Improve Your Child’s Handwriting Skills . Why? Regular lined paper, and almost all worksheets, are usually jam-packed with lines. Red lines, green lines, lines with airplanes and worms. There are papers designed by occupational therapists that are even more complex than the mass-market choices.
All this is often visual noise to kids with sensory processing issues and ocular or visual-perceptual issues. These problems are sometimes subtle and appear to be behavioral. The kids who “hate to write”. The kids who look away when you are demonstrating how to write a letter or spell a word. The kids who cannot seem to remember where to start a letter, even after repeated practice. These children often do much better with HWT’s double-lined paper.
Let’s drill down into the design of this unique paper:
- Double-lined paper provides just two lines; the baseline and the midline. Knowing where to start uppercase letters and tall lowercase letters is important, and this paper encourages practice and awareness while still giving some structure to writing.
- There is a wide empty space between sets of lines. This is intentional; children have room to place the tails of lowercase “y” and “j”, for example, without blocking the uppercase or tall lowercase letters of the next line of writing. For many kids, not knowing what to do about crowding and spacing is a good reason to stop trying to write well, or sometimes even write at all.
- This sturdy paper is pre-punched to be used in a 3-ring binder. The quality of the paper is very high, which means that it doesn’t tear easily when a child erases a mistake. Most schools provide the thinnest paper for teachers to use as handouts, creating the potential for a disaster when given to a child that struggles with grading their force on an eraser, or makes multiple errors in a word.
- Brains get practice in sizing and proportion. Once kids have a pattern of letter formation, it is easier to accomplish without the extra midline. But so many kids need that “training wheel” effect much longer than scrolls recognize. Many kids need a day or two of double-lined paper use to start understanding the way a letter “h” is twice as tall as a letter “a” and the same size but aligned differently than the letter “y”. Of course, pointing it out is important, and so is working on other writing qualities such as letter and word spacing.
- Kids write faster. Because they are guided to proportion and start letters correctly, they don’t waste time thinking about it or erasing incorrect letters. Again, this doesn’t mean their brain isn’t taking it all in. If that were true, we would start every kid on single-lined paper in preschool.
- There are three line sizes, so you don’t have to abandon the double-lines when your kid enter middle school. I will admit that I wish the pre-k/K paper were thicker. But it is still fairly sturdy.
- You can alternate using this paper with single-lined paper to see when to “take the training wheels off” and stop using double-lined paper. Kids should always have a chance to practice with standard paper, but when the choice is between fighting and crying, and quickly executing a homework assignment, it is no contest.
The best paper wins.
