As a teacher and a mum, I have noticed that every child approaches the art of handwriting in their own unique way. Some grip the pencil as if it’s an offensive weapon, whereas others seem to possess a natural ability to use any writing implement as if it’s a natural extension of their hand.
Now, I could get into a long rhetoric about the perfect age to start ‘writing’ and how the curriculum doesn’t allow children to follow their own appropriate stages of development, but I won’t. For me, the key is to develop a child’s fine and gross motor skills as soon as they are able. This doesn’t mean putting a pencil in their hand, but it could mean this:
Cooking, playing with LEGO/Duplo, modelling clay…Spirographs…all of these activities strengthen and develop hand control. They’re good fun too!
At Handwriting Club, we do a fair amount of this on a regular basis:
Arts and crafts are a great way of learning to how to manipulate tools, without the pressure of forming the perfect letter. We also use trays of wet sand and shaving foam, before we even pick up a pencil and think about grip.
If your child is finding letter formation a bit of challenge, why not pop into Handwriting Club one Saturday morning? It’s great fun if I do say so myself.
Chicken and Frog Bookshop 