Handwriting Without A Pencil

I am often asked how parents can work with their children to improve handwriting and letter formation. Here are some simple and effective ideas.

What you will learn

• Ideas for letter formation without using pen and paper
• Ideas to develop fine motor skills that will support hand strength
• Handwriting without pen and paper

Schools are on holidays and your children need a break from learning too. However, you can incorporate lots of letter formation activities through fun and often messy activities. The important thing is to get your child to use their whole arm to form the letters, not just finger movements. This really helps to secure the memory trace for the letter formation.

So what can you do to help handwriting:

• draw letters with a stick in the sand – write names and messages
• put shaving foam all over the table and draw letters with your hands and fingers
• draw letters on fabric which feels nice, such as velvet or fluffy jumpers
• make letters with playdough
• make craft letters with all kinds of materials – further ideas at www.tutordude.com.au
• roll out play dough and use lego to print the letters – looks and feel really cool
• make the letters with pins on a pin board
• fill a ziplock bag with gel (hair gel works well), double seal it for safety, then use it to draw the letters, another really tactile activity

Search for letter formation on Pintrest and you are guaranteed to find many, many more ideas.

Apps for handwriting

There are lots of apps for handwriting be really cautious that they use the same letter formations as your child is being taught at school other wise this can lead to confusion. Also, check the app will not allow your child to form the letter incorrectly. There are many where you join the dots but if you do it in the wring order it doesn’t pick that up as wrong – for example, letter a, it is important to go around anti clock wise, some apps don’t pick this up. Currently I like Dinosaur letter lite (don’t use the cursive part as most Australian schools do not use that font), abc pocket phonics and iwritewords.

There are many drawing apps available which you can use to write whatever letters you like. My current favourites are paint sparkles, chalk draw,  glow draw, glitter draw, draw free, magic slate. You can also use these as another way to practice spelling words.

Building finger strength for handwriting

There are so many simple craft activities you can do at home which develop fine motor skills which in turn develop the tiny muscles in the hand needed to control a pencil. The best activities I have found have been by googling a topic your child has an interest in e.g. dinosaur craft activities. The other fantastic site is Pintrest – you can save your ideas to pin boards to use later.

Not sure how to form the letters – check of the pages on letter formation at www.tutordude.com.au

Watch the video for more

I hope this has been useful. Watch out for further ideas to help your child  from www.TutorDude.com.au