Whitney Public School Lettering Workshop

Last week, the Ligatures team had the opportunity to teach lettering to a very enthusiastic grade 6 class at Whitney Public School in Toronto. As you may know, cursive handwriting has been removed from some curriculums and most of the younger generation's development is spent learning through the keyboard or tablet. Governments in both Ontario and Quebec have pulled cursive as a learning expectation and other provinces are following suit. With all that in mind, Ligatures co-founders Christopher & Leslie created a fun and interactive day that introduced these keen, young participants to traditional hand-lettering.

We spent the first half of the morning working on basic letter structure using the Crayola Brush Pen markers and our Ligatures tracing guides. With the lettering building blocks in place, the kids moved forward to using paint and brushes. The kids seemed to enjoy this transition and noted the difference in working with an actual paint brush.

As part of the preparation for the day, each student was asked to prepare a short 2-word quote that would be used as their final piece. The latter half of the afternoon was spent practicing the words from their quotes and creating colourful backgrounds for their final pieces. Although some kids were anxious to move forward and work on their final piece, some took the time to ensure that they had mastered their lettering. It was a great exercise in planning & composition.

What an amazing and rewarding day! Every student was so talented, creative & keen to learn from us and explore new ways of writing. A huge THANK-YOU to Ms. Diniz and her wonderful grade 6 students. Keep up the great work!

If you'd be interested in having the Ligatures team come into your classroom, please feel free to email us at ligatures.yyz@gmail.com and we'd be happy to discuss further.