Many children struggle with handwriting skills as they enter preschool and kindergarten. However, these struggles started well before they entered any structured academic program. Often times, these children avoided crafts such as coloring, cutting, drawing, and gluing at home due to fine motor difficulties. Without participating in pre-requisite tasks such as coloring at a young age, a child with fine motor difficulties will continue to struggle with more difficult tasks such as writing and tracing letters when he or she gets older.
The key to fine motor development is to separate it from visual motor tasks such as drawing shapes, coloring inside the lines, and writing letters of the alphabet. Combining fine motor tasks (holding writing utensils well) and visual motor tasks (tracing letters) when the child still struggles to hold writing utensils will increase frustration and decrease attention to task. If your child struggles with tracing or out right refuses to participate in educational worksheets, focus on free expressive creativity and fine motor skills until your child is able to hold and use a pencil well. Keep in mind, you can always work on visual motor skills without writing such as letter identification, puzzles, and reading. More on that to come.
If your child avoids crafts and coloring, try using different writing utensils to help facilitate a mature grasp and improve your child's overall fine motor development.
For children ages 1 years old to 3 years old, use large writing utensils that facilitate a digital or finger grasp. The large size of the writing utensil will encourage stability as well as strengthening fingers for a mature pencil grasp. When finding an item, we’re looking for a wide, but short utensil that helps transition your child from a full palm grasp to a digital grasp.
The following items are a great place to start:
Cotton Balls - for dot style painting
Wine Corks - for dot style painting
For children ages 3 years old to 5 years old, use small, short writing utensils to facilitate a mature grasp. The short utensils will challenge their fingers to work on stability and strength rather than their whole hands. Over time, this position will feel more comfortable and their grasp will improve greatly
Color with a variety of utensils such as:
Broken Crayons - great for facilitating a digital grasp!
Cotton Swabs - great for painting!
It’s important to remember that when focusing on grasp development, you should avoid adding too many challenges with worksheets, writing, and drawing. Let the child have fun by coloring or free drawing! This will keep them engaged in the craft, feel more confident and overall be happy!
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