Handwriting Practice Doesn’t Have to be Difficult: How you can begin improving your student’s handwriting
This week I bring to you a guest blog post from Kelli Fetter at Handwriting Solutions!
I get it, helping your child with academic skills isn’t rainbows and butterflies. Raise your hand if covid schooling made you want to scream (just me?!). But what I DO know is that YOU can begin facilitating your handwriting improvement in your home today! Even if you aren’t a teacher, or childhood development expert, or a handwriting specialist 😉
First, let’s talk foundations! Handwriting is the tip of the iceberg, and when we see messy handwriting we have to understand that there is more going on below the surface. Often kids need to build up their foundational skills for writing, such as improving their fine motor skills and strength, improving their core strength for posture, and improving their hand-eye coordination. The beauty of this? All of this can be done through intentional PLAY! Break out the playdough, clay, beads, mazes, board games, coloring books, and more!!
Next, consider how you can make handwriting practice fun! Shake it up from the traditional pencil to paper. Maybe go outside with sidewalk chalk to write giant letters. This builds some serious strength while also engraining that motor movement so they can translate it to smaller paper-pencil tasks. Or tape a paper to the wall and write while standing or kneeling, which strengths their should while encouraging a better grasp pattern, important for writing. Use multi-sensory methods to stimulate their interest and facilitate brain pathways that leads to better retention. For ideas, click here!
Finally, get them interested in writing! Writing by hand shouldn’t be a task that they avoid. How can you make it fun for them? Gear your student towards writing about their interests, finding that intrinsic motivation is key. Encourage your child to brain dump before writing paragraphs/essays to lower the pressure. This can be done through a bullet list, drawing out their thoughts, using a mind map or graphic organizer. Get the creative juices flowing! Or simply pull in fun games like mad libs or roll a dice writing prompts for writing practice that doesn’t feel like practice.
The key is to come at handwriting help from a strengths and interest based approach. How can we build upon or leverage their strengths? How can we get them eager to write (ok, or at least not hating it!)? By using a bottom up approach of building foundational skills coupled with a top down approach of explicit handwriting instruction, we can help our little learners become skilled writers. Because in the end we want legible, functional, efficient handwriting, we’re not looking for perfect penmanship.
Still feeling overwhelmed, not sure what to do, or just need someone else to take the reins? Our handwriting specialist is an expert in ALL things handwriting, so reach out today for a free consultation!