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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Writing practice: how to help your struggling child

Child practising handwriting
Is your child’s handwriting a cause for concern? Help them to improve it with these simple activities.

Not all children are given a good start with their handwriting. Some may suffer from changes of schools or teachers during the early years, and others still may simply find handwriting especially difficult.

A child who has never crawled in the early years or who finds things like dressing, putting on shoes, tying laces, catching a ball or hopping and jumping hard to do is likely to find writing more difficult than others. A child who fulfils these criteria and might be affected by dysgraphia might benefit from some sessions with a paediatric occupational therapist. Either the school or your GP could arrange a referral.

Positive support

When older children have very untidy or illegible writing nothing at all is achieved by critical comments, either written or spoken. Children who have poor handwriting are usually well aware of it but have no idea how they can change it for the better.
 
The first step to improving handwriting is to look carefully at a page of the child’s normal writing and to try to decide exactly what is making it untidy or hard to read. Focus on what is going wrong and practise just that for a while. 

Tackling handwriting problems

Try these quick exercises to help with common problems:
 
Problem: The letters are not resting on the baseline.
Try this: Don’t let your child practise on plain paper, instead buy lined. Get them to write out simple words, making sure that the bottoms of them touch the baseline each time.
 
Problem: The ascenders (sticks) on letters ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘h’, ‘k’, and ‘l’, for example, are not tall enough.
Try this: Use double-lined (tram-lined) paper if you can get it, otherwise ordinary lined paper. First write out the sentences: 
‘The boy had a kite in his hand.’
‘Take this ball home to Dad.’
‘I must not let the dog get out.’
Now ask your child to put a red dot on the top of all the tall letters. Ask your child to copy the sentences, making sure that they begin each tall letter high enough. Write the sentences several times a day. 
 
Problem: There are no spaces between the words. 
Try this: Write or type out some simple sentences for your child and ask them to draw a pencil line where the spaces between the words should be. Now ask them to copy the sentences, leaving the spaces between words, so that the sentences make sense. Finally, get them to write the letter ‘o’ in each space. Encourage them to write these every day until they get them all right on their first go.

Print out our free blank handwriting practice paper to help your child size and position letters correctly, or look through our Handwriting Learning Journey for a step-by-step guide to improving handwriting.

Exercising the fingers

There are many enjoyable activities which help young children to develop the strength and dexterity in their fingers which are necessary for holding and controlling a pencil. These could include modelling with playdough or Plasticine, doing simple jigsaw puzzles, tracing, colouring, threading beads, finger-painting, following dot-to-dot pictures, playing with sand and any other games which involve controlling and manipulating with their hands and fingers. 
 
Children who are not interested in undertaking such activities by themselves will often enjoy them if a parent or an older brother or sister will join in.