Support Your Child With Literacy by Pam Larkins

Author:Pam Larkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: school, learning, literacy, primary, class, help, children, child, home, schooling, reading, writing, words, education, teacher, teach, top of the class, preparing, pre school, pre, preparation, prepare, KS1, KS2, kindergarden, kindergarten
ISBN: 9781781662878
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Handwriting

The ability to write comes with the development of fine motor skills; the co-ordination of the fingers and eyes through small muscle movements. The development of these skills takes a long time and begins at a very early age. Many need to be taught and are not learnt automatically but this learning is much more fun when done through play.

Throwing and catching balls or beanbags into a hoop or bucket, playing skittles, threading beads, building towers with bricks, using construction toys, picking up small objects with fingers, tongs or tweezers are all useful activities.

Children need to develop gripping and grasping skills using both the whole hand and the fingers. Squeezing, moulding or rolling playdough, clay and plasticine, using sponges to suck up water and squeeze it out again in the bath, cutting shapes of increasing difficulty are all fun ways to do this.

Scrunch or roll tissue paper and other materials to stick onto card to make pictures, use large paintbrushes to paint, press or turn levers, switches or knobs to make things move, fasten or undo buttons, zips and other fastenings, play board games that involve picking up or placing items such as counters.

Once children have developed the skill to do some of these things they can begin pre writing skills that enable them to make marks on paper or other surfaces. Using fingers in the early stages is a good start. Make trails in the sand from one side to the other, from left to right as a precursor to learning about the ‘writing direction’ and progress to using fingers to make letter shapes. Use fingers to paint making pictures and later letter shapes. Make letter shapes from playdough or trace letters in the air. Use a range of different writing tools and surfaces.

Move on to using large paintbrushes and water, painting lines, different shapes and letters on paving slabs, progressing to painting pictures, lines and letter shapes on paper using paint or crayons. Use large crayons to draw pictures, lines, shapes and letters. Then use smaller crayons and colour in pre-drawn pictures, keeping within the lines in order to develop the fine control.

Use a pencil or pencil crayon to draw vertical and horizontal lines of different lengths, both straight and curved, or join them to make a circle. Start with a big circle and draw decreasing circles inside using different colours. Use the same technique for other shapes. Use a pencil to trace a path through a maze. Trace over shapes, lines and later letters or join up dots to make a picture then colour it in. Magic slates or whiteboards are excellent writing mediums because mistakes can be quickly erased and children do not feel as threatened as when putting pencil to paper.

It is much better to learn good handwriting skills early on, rather than having to correct them at a later time. Activities such as those above which develop fine motor control will be essential in helping your child to write. They will have helped children to grip and grasp writing implements in the correct way.

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