Handwriting can often be a tough thing for many children to grasp. It can feel tedious and boring to some kids, and often getting your children to practice can feel like a bit of a battle.
What can you do to ensure that you encourage handwriting practice and raise your child’s confidence levels? Here are some of the tips that could help.
Tips to help your child with their handwriting
Strengthen their fine motor skills
Often the reason why children struggle with handwriting is that they need to work on their fine motor skills. This is strengthening their hands, wrists and fingers. So how can you do that? Using playdough and moulding things is a great way to do it. As well as encouraging younger children to pick things up with their pincer grip. The more they strengthen areas in their hands and fingers, the easier handwriting practice will become.
A pencil grip could help
Sometimes the issue is holding the pencil or pen, so having a grip to encourage them to hold the pencil or pen in the right way could be a great way to help them. You can easily purchase these online, and it can make holding the pen and pencil much more comfortable. Enabling them to focus on the writing rather than the grip. The ergonomic design of the STABILO EASYgraph helps children to find the right grip in order to start learning the art of handwriting.
Practice
It may sound so simple, but the practice is always going to help your child gain more confidence. But often it can feel like a bit of a battle to ensure that they do it. So instead find ways that they may want to practice. You might be able to find a book that makes it more interesting or printing worksheets off the internet could present the handwriting practice in a more fun way.
Pick your battles
Another thing to remember is that you should always pick your battles. It isn’t always easy when it comes to asking your child to do something and being faced with a defiant no and that they don’t want to. So instead choose your battles. If it isn’t essential then don’t force it. The last thing you want to do is cause frustration and instant defiance against it. Sometimes choosing the times when your child might be more receptacle to handwriting is the best course of action.
It isn’t just about the pencil and paper
Finally, practicing their writing skills doesn’t always mean a pen, pencil, and paper. You can think outside of the box when it comes to practicing. A foggy mirror, shaving foam on a tuff tray, and even things sand and water can be great ways to practice handwriting and letter configuration. Especially in smaller children. Think outside of the box and try and encourage writing practice through play. They may be more eager to try different things and then practice this with a pencil and paper once they have had some fun. Games can help in other areas of schooling as well such as phonics and reading.
Hopefully, these tips will help you when it comes to your child struggling with their handwriting.
Win a STABILO Handwriting Bundle
To help your children who may be struggling with their handwriting, we are lucky enough to have a STABILO bundle to giveaway.
PRIZE: STABILO Handwriting Bundle includes STABILO EASYoriginal rollerball pen, EASYgraph graphite pencils 2-pack and a STABILO Notelet.
To enter complete the Gleam widget below, all entries are optional and each one completed will gain you more entries into the random draw.
STABILO Handwriting Bundle
