Handwriting skills are taught by the Bow Valley Calligraphy Guild

The Bow Valley Calligraphy Guild (BVCG) has published an extensive workbook Teaching Handwriting to Young Children: A Resource for Teachers and Parents.

It is designed for children in Kindergarten through 3rd grade, but this resource can help older children and adults learn and improve their print and handwriting skills.

“Writing helps learning and helps people think about things and form clear ideas,” said Adrienne Waller, BVCG member and program creator.

“It takes you away from zero focus because we look at the internet too much.”

Waller has always loved handwriting and is passionate about learning different styles of writing.

He has done extensive research on what is most effective in teaching today's young learners.

“Italics date back to the 15th century,” he said. “It's something the Italians did to get rid of the black letter that the Germans used and most medieval people used before the printing press, so this cursive font is the only font you can go from one printed letter to the next. a cursive letter without re-creating or re-learning the letter form'.

Waller's partner in the project was Renate Worthington.

They started work on it in August 2023 and finished it in March 2024.

“I think there are some really interesting elements that show how to teach letters that are easy and useful, and I think that's probably missing right now,” Worthington said.

“The challenge is that people who don't know how to do it teach other people how to do it, so it would be really helpful to pick up a few ideas from this program.”

Both collaborated on the project with Hetty Rossingh of the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary.

BVCG president Thea Paul says it's a way for guild members to give back to the community.

The entire project is run by volunteers and is free for educators and parents.

“It was very important,” he said. “It was up to our team and Adrienne to get the trade name for it copyright-free and set it up so anyone could use it for free.”

According to Paul, printing and writing skills are not a priority in classrooms today and haven't been for some time, leading to teenagers and twenty-somethings not knowing how to write.

“It's a really big deal because you get a letter from your grandmother, you get a card in the mail, you get something handwritten, and you literally – it's like a foreign language,” he said. “It's like code you can't read.”

According to Waller, the project took hundreds of hours to make it easy for both teachers and students to complete.

“There are exercises that create geometric shapes that are the basis of all letters,” he said. “They connect the dots and draw, and they have to go from point A to point B and get their pencils where they want them to go.”

Waller encourages parents to work on a project with their children to improve writing skills they haven't used in years.

“Parents should do this with their kids so their handwriting improves or they learn how to do cursive handwriting with cursive,” she said.

For more information, you can visit the Bow Valley Calligraphy Guild website.