Introducing Garden Primary: A Font Designed for Gifted and Talented Students
I’m excited to introduce Garden Primary, a unique font system I’ve developed specifically to support gifted and talented students in their writing journey. The design of Garden Primary is rooted in research and scientific principles aimed at preventing letter inversions—a common challenge for many young learners.
Garden Primary features:
- Larger apertures: This design choice makes each letter more prominent and easier to distinguish, which is particularly beneficial for young readers and writers.
- Distinct letter sets: Letters that are frequently inverted, such as ‘b’ and ‘d’, and ‘p’ and ‘q’, have unique designs to help differentiate them. This reduces confusion and supports clearer learning.
- Different ascenders and descenders: By varying the lengths and styles of ascenders and descenders, the font minimizes the risk of letter inversions and enhances letter recognition.
- Slight slanting: The slight slant of the letters further distinguishes each character, making it easier for students to recognize and remember them.
- Lowercase focus: Gifted children can start with the lowercase alphabet, which is often more commonly used in reading and writing, and transition to uppercase letters later in order to spearhead their writing. Gifted children often write earlier and faster and starting with lowercase helps them develop at their own pace.
The font allowed for custom worksheets to be made for each student.
Garden Primary worksheet that shows a custom name exercise.
Adding to the uniqueness of Garden Primary is its bug and garden theme. The font includes helper lines representing the sky, the grass, and the ground, which guide students in proper letter formation and line awareness. Each letter is categorized according to its formation style. For instance, ‘caterpillar letters’ start at the top and curve around like a caterpillar, making the learning process both fun and intuitive.
Below are a few examples of before and after photos of gifted students in Kindergarten and First grade who were taught to write with Garden Primary. All writing samples were freehand, non-guided. Samples include work from students Jack, Peyton and Elinora.
