Handwriting Without Tears: 
“My Printing Book”
“Printing Power”
“Cursive Handwriting”
“Cursive Success”
“Can-do-Cursive”
Handwriting Without Tears is a handwriting program created by an occupational therapist. It is a 40 year program with proven success for thousands of students.
We started using HWT right from the beginning of when we started homeschooling. It has proven to be an excellent program in our home. The beauty of the curriculum is how simple it is for the child to learn! We started using the program at the 1st grade level. My daughter is a lefty and I knew I wanted a handwriting program that would help her to write beautifully.
Their unique writing paper is unlike any other handwriting program. The writing paper does not have the typical three lines with the middle line being a dotted line. HWT believes typical handwriting paper causes line confusion for many students. HWT created writing paper with only 2 lines. The bottom line keeps the child’s writing straight. The second line called the mid-line controls the size of the letters. HWT believes by having only 2 lines will cause less confusion for the child. HWT offers different levels of the paper. There is the wide double line, regular double line, and narrow double line. HWT also offer writing notebooks and journals. I love the notebooks. We use them for science, history, art, and more.
About the program: There are seven levels available starting in the pre-k level up to 5th grade. We did not use the pre-k level or the kindergarten levels since we were not homeschooling yet. The pre-k and kindergarten levels are a hands-on approach with various materials. I will tell you about the levels starting in 1st grade and up. Their products are not labeled by grade but HWT does recommend certain levels for each grade. As the parent you can decide when your child is ready for each level. That’s the beauty of homeschooling!
“My Printing Book” is recommended for 1st grade. In this book the student will be introduced to printing lowercase letters and reviewing capitals. The hands-on material is also suggested for this grade. There is the 4″x6″ slate chalkboard used to practice making letters. We did not use the slate chalkboards but I do think it is a wonderful way to reinforce your child’s handwriting skills.
“Printing Power” is recommended for 2nd grade. The student continues to master his printing skills.
“Cursive Writing” is recommended for 3rd grade. It is the first book that teaches cursive. At this level the student can continue to use the manipulatives to help practice his new cursive skills.
“Cursive Success” is recommended for 4th grade. The child continues his mastery of his cursive skills.
“Can-do-Cursive” is recommended for 5th grade. This is perfect for the child who needs another year to master their cursive writing skills.What is a typical lesson like? It is a simple program to implement. My children do 1-2 pages for each lesson. Each new skill is clearly taught in the child’s book. HWT uses simple explanations for each new skill. In the lower grades, HWT uses “magic bunny” to show how to make new letters. In the older grades, HWT continues to use simple explanations and drawings that the child can easily understand. The lessons are short and can be done in 15 minutes or less! The teacher guides provides tips and activities for each lesson.
Handwriting Without Tears is a no-fuss program that is simple to use! It is very affordable. The student books and teacher guides are $6.95 each. The teacher guides are simple but do provide plenty of instructions, tips, activities, and lesson plans. As homeschool moms we often ask “Do I even need the teacher’s guide?” I do recommend using the TG to get the full benefit of the program. There are manipulatives available for all the grade levels. As the parent you can chose to incorporate the manipulatives or not. The manipulatives are wonderful for a tactile learner.
What are cons to Handwriting without Tears? Honestly, I can not think of one negative thing of this program. If you prefer the fancier handwriting then you may not like the style of HWT. It is a simple style that is meant to give the child a strong foundation as they learn their own style of handwriting.
The HWT website is very helpful if you would like more information. There are plenty of samples to view.
You might also like:
- Handwriting Without Tears: Cursive Success
- Cursive Handwriting Resources for Elementary
- Print to Cursive Proverbs from Simply Charlotte Mason
- Handwriting Without Tears: Letters and Numbers for Me
- Handwriting Without Tears Hands on Materials
Written by Korey and first published July 2009
Brenda is a homeschooling mother of 5, who has a wonderful husband encouraging her to be the best woman that God has created her to be. Together they are very intentional about spending time together as a family. She considers her daily life with her children as her ministry and has found many avenues to encourage others to live a lifestyle of learning. She is the founder of a curriculum review site authored by a group of well-known homeschool bloggers, The Curriculum Choice.
LOVED this review!
I’ve been wondering about this program. Thanks for the review.
HWT is by far the best handwriting curriculum that we have ever used–and we have tried many! I am just sorry I didn’t know about it 15 years ago when we started our homeschooling journey.
I will say that the one drawback of the program is that I found it difficult to find my way around in it at first. There is so much information to absorb. I would have preferred a format that had Lesson 1 and suggest game/activity/practice for each day instead of pages and pages for me to read and try to absorb as a teacher. Philosophy notes could be inserted throughout the text with an TOC for that, too. I taught handwriting in the public school for years but just found this program while homeschooling my daughter. I’m on week 2 of using the K version and I do think it is the best and already purchased the PK to use with little brother.
Unfortunately I do not agree with the majority of reviews of this program. I find absolutely no reason to not integrate the learning of letter formation with the knowledge of letter names and sounds. The heirarchy of learning submits that first, children learn to listen as infants, later begin to speak, they they begin to apply that knowledge of speaking and sounds to the abstract symbols of letters. Following this extremely challenging process, is the ability to put those sounds together within text along with understanding that text’s meaning. Once this begins, the children are able to begin to write their letters with meaning. It is absolutely beyond me as to why this program initiates teaching the children upper case letters first when all of written print for the children to read consists of a majority of lower case letters. If the reason is merely because, “it’s easier,” a new reason needs to be found.
I too thought that kids should learn the lowercase letters first since the vast majority of what they read and write will be lowercase. Then I began teaching my daughter to print her letters. After over a year, I finally realized my stubbornmess on this issue was a stumbing block on HER path to learning to print.
Truly, “it’s easier” is the only reason needed to teach uppercase first. Kids develop fine motor skills at vastly different rates. The uppercase letters are simply easier to write and mastering them gives kids a confidence boost, encourging them to continue learning to write. Forcing kids with average or even lagging fine motor skills to try to master lowercase letters first is almost cruel.
Now, why should learning to form the letters be separate from learning the letter sounds? Same reason – kids gain the necessary fine motor skills at vastly different rates that are not related to their developmental abiltiy to learn to read. My daughter could recognize all of the alphabet and knew her letter sounds at 2.5 years. She was sounding out words by the time she turned 3.5 and is reading at an early first grade level now at 4.5 years. But she only just developed the fine motor skills necessary to draw decent lines and curves. Should I have held off on teaching her to read? Of course not. And if she HAD been ready to learn to write as she was learning her letters, then I could have easily integrated the two lessons myself.
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