Chocolate Cursive Handwriting Practice

For me as a parent it seems like we’ve just learnt to write and suddenly appearing in the kids school bags is information on cursive handwriting – joined up writing for those of us that remember the lessons. Trying to make the muscles remember how to print the letters correctly takes time and then to unteach them and reteach them also takes time and practice. I remember every morning as a student going in and getting my handwriting books and folders and working through them a letter, word, sentences and a paragraph at a time reteaching my hands to write slightly differently. But, it is possible to teach through some hands-on activities as well – today for this weeks theme of Chocolate we’re using chocolate creatively to practice handwriting.

Materials needed

Chocolate Chips

Zip ‘n’ Cloze Snack Bags

White Paper

Clingfilm/Saran Wrap

Marker

Learning Objectives

• Can begin to use some of the diagonal and horizontal strokes needed to join letters.
• Show that I know which letters are best left unjoined.

Preparation

Place the chocolate chips into a Ziploc Snack BagChocolate Cursive Handwriting Practice

We started off with letters that I knew my eldest would know – s a and t these are the first three letters the kids in the UK learn to read and write and also it seems that the order that the teachers are teaching joined up writing to them now.

I wrote the word sat joined up and then placed a piece of plastic bag/cling film/saran wrap over the top.

With the bag of melted chocolate chips I checked the temperature and then cut a small hole from the corner and sealed the bag – you may want to double seal it with some sticky tape but we didn’t need to.

I then demonstrated how to trace the words over the top of the writing and helped him form them in the correct direction.

Although we are using two hands to form the letters this exercise is to help children to develop a sense of the way that the letters are formed and how they join together.

We carried on with me writing a word and then him tracing the word over with the chocolate. It was great to talk about when to lift the “pen” and when to continue, which letters to connect and which letters don’t – do check with your school on where they will be connecting or make a decision at home – our school is not connecting letters f, g, y and some of the other letters are connecting in slightly different positions than I was taught.

As an alternative to this DIY you could use a Chocolate Pen (US), Chocolate Pen(UK) which would allow your child to use the finger grip and help with muscle memory for the formation of letters and words.

Another way to help your kids with their cursive writing is using a sensory alphabet – we have a FREE set of printable cursive letters that you can use to create a DIY SENSORY ALPHABET at home.

More Chocolate Themed Learning Activities for Early Elementary Kids