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Home › Articles › Back to Preschool Headquarters › Handwriting 101

Handwriting 101

Helping Your Child Learn to Write

By Teri Brown

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(Celtic Cross Publishing, August 2004), says that hand-eye coordination begins to develop at an early age and children need to perfect that coordination in order to learn writing skills. "Through repetition and practice of specific movements, the brain and muscles learn to work together as a team," says Conroy.

Conroy and other experts encourage parents to give their children a wide range of prewriting activities to promote the development of the necessary skills. "Fine motor tasks that encourage eye-hand coordination of any kind help children with writing," says Conroy. These may include:

  • Placing small pegs in pegboards;
  • Sticking golf tees in Styrofoam;
  • Dropping pebbles in skinny tubes;
  • Moving coins, buttons and beads from one container to another with the index finger and thumb.

Get a Grip
The correct grip is one of the most important things you can teach your child. This is also the first thing you should check if your child is having difficulty with her handwriting. The wrong grip may be causing your child to strain too hard physically to manipulate the pencil.

Is your child's thumb actually on the pencil, or is it wrapped around the pencil or the other fingers? She should grip the pencil equally by the thumb, the side of the middle finger and the tip of the index finger. This is called a "tripod grip."

Once your child has the correct grip, there are many fun writing activities that can encourage prewriting and writing skills. Conroy gives the following tips to encourage your child's writing skills:

  • Tracing an adult's writing first, then writing the same thing underneath.
  • Writing captions under pictures.
  • Creating designs that are repetitive in nature, using the "strokes" of handwriting.
  • Lightly pounding thin, short picture nails with a tack hammer into Styrofoam. For more difficulty, have the child put the nail into a line drawn in a shape on the wood.
  • Lacing cards, lacing pegs, lacing beads.
  • Tracing shapes and letters with a finger, then a larger stick, into dry or wet sand, rice or shaving cream.

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