Handwriting skills are critical to your child’s success. “Research has shown that work done by hand increases as students progress in the school, so children need to be taught writing to be successful in school.”

Handwriting skills indicate two aspects:

• Neatness and legibility of letters
• How the handwriting is performed; how is the pencil held? is there a pain?

Other studies have proven that solid handwriting skills affect students’ self-esteem, which can affect their academic performance, create more fluid writers with better critical thinking skills, and create better readers.

How can you tell if the child needs to work on Handwriting skills: 

• Look awkward in the way they hold the pencil and produce the writing.
• Have writing that is messy, illegible, letters are not written on the line and/or are not the correct size.
• Slow in completing written tasks.
• Can explain their ideas verbally, but struggles to write them down.
• Gets tired while writing, quickly

What Parents of can do:

Writing does not come easy for young children—whose necessary fine motor skills are not yet fully developed. But with some simple techniques fine motor skills can be build at home.

Scribble time: Let your child trace or draw shapes and simple drawings in early childhood BEFORE letters are introduced.

Zentangles: Let you children color in small projects which require slow and controlled movements. Download free zentangles from our resources.

Tracing tactics: Provide different mediums like play dough, sand or chalk and board and let them draw shapes on their own.

Work that core: Exercise the core muscles and shoulder muscles so that the hands and fingers will be able to move more freely and accurately. Join Sportyze – The Kids Gym to give core muscles a good workout.

Media time: Encourage your child to spend less time on electronic devices and more time on gross motor and fine motor activities to build these skills. Computer games do not help develop the in-hand manipulation and finger skills that are needed for handwriting.

Hand-eye coordination: Develop this skill with lots of gross motor hand-eye exercises. Bean bag games, ball tossing games at Sportyze classes, boosts hand-eye coordination. You can also use resources related to maze puzzle and follow the path picture available in Sportyze website.

Whether a child is an auditory, tactile, or kinesthetics learner, multi-sensory activities for 10-15 minutes a day, followed by workbook instruction, will create a solid foundation for success in handwriting.