Better Handwriting Day 1: Getting Started
I am so excited, the long awaited 7 Days to Better Handwriting has finally arrived! I have created 7 days worth of simple, fun and quick activities designed to improve your child’s pencil control, concentration and muscle memory in order to make the task of handwriting a natural and established skill. As your children practice with these activities, they will begin to get proficient at letter formation, size and spacing. Once these skills have been mastered you will see a gradual progression of better, more legible handwriting.
Finding Your Baseline
In order to see improvement we need to know how well your child is drawing and writing already. We need a control for our experiment.
Today’s activity is a drawing and writing activity. Drawing is something that all children do on their own from an early age. It is often a way for them to express themselves and get those ideas out of their head and in to the world, especially for visual learners.
Since kids are more relaxed and less intimidated drawing than writing – let’s get them started by drawing first, then writing one or two sentences about what they drew.
You can help them think of what to draw and write about, but let them do the writing. And for this type of activity – there is no need to focus on spelling. We are not working on composition just the actual letter formation. It’s about seeing where they’re at with their handwriting. This exercise is for you to see how they make their letters, sizes and shapes of each letter and the spaces in between. This will help you get a sense of their overall strengths and weaknesses.
So, let’s get started. The first step in improving handwriting is using the appropriate tool. In order for your children to succeed, they need the correct supplies.
Give your child a great pencil! This seems obvious but it’s not. So often we hand kids a basket of stubby banged up old crayons to draw with. This does not inspire. Give kids good pencils, with good erasers. So much of our kids success in drawing and writing stems from the basics… a no. 2 pencil freshly sharpened with a quality eraser will allow them to the correct pencil grip and appropriately train their fine muscles.
Have fun.
Keep it light.
