Ericka Kammerer wrote:

On the other hand, there is often an expectation
that parents will be heavily involved in homework. My
experience is that they don't really do much in the
classroom ensuring that they learn to form their letters
properly, and if you don't step in to some degree,
they're *royally* screwed in third grade when they
try to move to cursive because they're forming all
their letters improperly.

I'm in complete agreement with this hand, and confess I will fall into
the trap of the 'erase it and do it over' role w/r/t DD1's homework.
Her penmanship is not great, and she still will write 5's and 2's
backwards. This was fine, until they started having math homework (1st
grade), where answering 5+7 = 15 (backwards 2) was not cool. I remember
days and days of having to write circles, then vertical lines, then
letter a, d, b, c, q, g and so on -- those days, AFAIK, are about as
likely as kids still having a nap in 1/2 day kindergarten. So...I give
her penmanship homework, big meanie that I am, and she's pleased that
her teacher (who has a very hands-off approach to penmanship, except
w/r/t math) has commented on her improvement. But heavens, did they run
out of time to reinforce penmanship -- just for the sake of
legibility, even -- in the elementary grades?

Caledonia