French Researchers Found: Older Preschoolers Who Wrote Letters by Hand Knew Them Better Than Kids Who Typed. Grandparents, This Gift Gets Little Hands Writing.

Grandparents who are about to buy another Christmas toy, I want to tell you about the curb.

I carried mail for 31 years. Same route most of that time. And every single January, I walked past the same thing on every block.

The boxes. Big, bright toy boxes, flattened and stacked by the trash cans. The plastic still in the windows. Some of those toys I had delivered myself a few weeks before.

You learn a lot about families carrying their mail. You learn who gets catalogs, who gets letters, who gets packages in December.

And you learn that a lot of what comes in December goes back out in January. Or ends up in the bottom of a toy bin.

I knew all that. I'm 69 now, retired, and I still bought my granddaughter Clara a talking robot dog two Christmases ago. It barked for about a week. Then the batteries died and nobody replaced them. It's under her bed.

Last fall, my daughter Michelle texted me Clara's Christmas list. Clara was four. At the bottom, Michelle had added a line of her own.

"Dad, please. No toys, no batteries. If you want to help, something for her letters."

I called her right away. What's wrong with her letters?

Nothing's wrong, Michelle said. Clara can sing the whole alphabet and spot every letter on a cereal box. Putting one on paper is another story. She holds the crayon in her fist and the letters come out like scribbles. At preschool she asks the teacher to write her name on her drawings.

Every grandparent knows that feeling. You want to help, and you live three hours up the highway.

Turns out I'd already been trying to help. I just hadn't been doing it well.

None of it was a bad gift, exactly. It just wasn't the gift she needed.

I'm not a computer guy. So I asked Michelle if there was any real research on little kids learning to write letters by hand.

She printed one out and mailed it to me. Old habits run in the family.

French researchers taught preschoolers, ages three to five, to copy letters. One group wrote them by hand. One group typed them on a keyboard. Afterward, the older kids in the group who wrote by hand were better at recognizing the letters than the ones who typed[1].

I read it at my kitchen table and thought about the alphabet puzzle. Clara snapping letters into place, and never once making one.

All those letters, and Clara's hand hadn't made a single one. The puzzle came with them already made.

A mail carrier reads handwriting all day. Shaky handwriting. Rushed handwriting. Beautiful handwriting from ladies who learned it in the 1950s.

And you learn that good handwriting starts with a steady hand going the same way every time.

A little kid on a flat sheet doesn't have that. Nothing keeps the pencil on the line. Her hand wobbles, the pencil slides off, and the letter comes out crooked. Then she does it crooked again. Nothing on the page shows her any different.

Michelle and I looked together over the phone, and we settled on the Magic Copybook Practice Set from Bright Bloomer.

The letters are pressed right into the paper. Grooves. The pen tip drops in and follows the letter. If her hand wobbles, the groove helps keep the pen on the path.

And the ink fades in about half an hour, so the page is clean again. That's what sold me as a gift. A coloring book gets used up in an afternoon. These pages get used again and again. It's the same book on the twentieth visit as on Christmas morning.

No batteries. Michelle was very happy about that.

I wrapped it in the Sunday comics, like my mother used to.

The day after Christmas last year, Clara came to my house. I still have my old mail satchel in the hall closet. So we made a game of it.

She was the clerk. I was the mail carrier. Her job was to "stamp" each letter in the book with the pen before I could deliver it.

She traced the C. The pen tip went down into the groove and around. She did it again. Then she found the L and the A.

Every few pages I'd walk the satchel around the living room and "deliver" to the couch. She thought that was the funniest thing in the world.

When we came back after lunch, the pages were clean, and she wanted to stamp them all over again.

Michelle asked me the same thing you're wondering. What about plain paper?

Here's how we do it, at Clara's pace. First, the groove only. Then a plain sheet next to the book: a letter in the groove, then the same letter on the sheet. Later, the sheet first, and back to the groove when she gets stuck.

One Sunday this fall, Clara tried CLARA on a real envelope with the book open beside her. She went back to the groove for the R, then finished it and handed it to me to deliver to her mother. Wobbly. Every letter there.

I've delivered a lot of mail. That's the one I'll remember.

The listing says it builds a better grip, a steady hand and focus. I carried mail for thirty one years. I've seen plenty of big promises come through the mail.

So I watched. Clara puts the little dolphin on the pen herself before she starts. She stays at my table for a whole page. And the girl who used to grab the crayons first now asks for the book first.

That robot dog cost me fifty two dollars. This whole set is less.

The Magic Copybook Practice Set is $37.99 for four books, the pen and the refills. Buy 2, save 20%. Buy 3, save 30%.

I've got three grandkids under seven. So this year I'm doing the three pack. One for Clara's little brother, one for my son's girl, and one for Clara, because she's going to wear the dolphin off hers.

Christmas will be here before you know it. The toy aisle will be full of things that bark for a week.

Do what I wish I'd done years ago. Give the grandkids something their hands can actually use. Something that's still on the table in March.

P.S. Clara asked if she can have my old satchel when she's bigger. I told her a mail carrier has to be able to write the addresses. She went and got the book.

P.P.S. Four books, the pen, five refills and the dolphin grip. No batteries. Easy returns.