Computer Off, Pencil Up: Course Helps Kids Get a Grip on Writing

Anna Schultz's two sons are whizzes when it comes to technology. Between them, they have four game systems, and their fingers can fly across a computer keyboard faster than their mom's.

But sometimes, 6-year-old Ben writes his e's backward. And when 7-year-old Jason had long journal assignments in class last year, he had trouble gripping the pencil.

"He came home, and his hand would hurt or he had cramps," said Schultz, a stay-at-home mother in Potomac Falls. "He was doing something wrong for it not to work."

So, while their friends were spending the waning days of summer at the pool and hanging out with friends, Ben and Jason were at the Claude Moore Community Center in Sterling in handwriting camp. They learned the ins and outs of good penmanship in preparation for their return to Lowes Island Elementary School today as public schools reopen in Northern Virginia.

In an era in which kids are more likely to use a computer to write a book report and a cellphone to send a note to a friend, there are still parents who believe that knowing how to write -- on paper, with a pen or pencil -- is still important. What's more, they shelled out $160 for the unusual summer camp to help their children conquer their penmanship fears.

"I'd like for them to struggle less," Schultz said, who added that if they get better, "it'll be worth it."

Ashburn resident Kely Davis, the camp teacher, is a certified instructor for the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum.

"The program is mechanical," said Davis, who decided to become trained in the program seven years ago so she could help her children learn the proper way to write. "This is usually what the teachers don't have time to do."

But her lessons in handwriting are nothing like those taught in a traditional classroom.

Instead of spending hours at a table writing and rewriting sentences, Davis's group of 10 boys and three girls, ages 6 to 9, spent that time playing with clay filled with tiny toys they had to extract and fashioning jump-ropes out of strings of beads.

Writing, after all, is a motor skill, and the toys Davis brought helped strengthen finger muscles needed for writing.

The week-long camp, Davis said, was only a crash course. Most children need a series of lessons before they start to adopt good handwriting techniques, including remembering to start their letters from top to bottom and developing mental reference points that decrease the chance of writing letters or numbers backward.