Your child has a terrible handwriting? Even his teachers can do nothing about it? His grades are bad because the teacher can’t always understand what he has written? Don’t panic! Your child just needs some of your help. You’re asking yourself how can you help your child to improve his handwriting and you’re not even a specialist? You definitely can!
In fact, most handwriting problems are related to fine motor skills and many experts believe that the increase in handwriting problems is due to the lack of physical activity of today’s children. Handwriting involves body posture and proper use of hands, arms, head and eyes. You can help your child to improve his handwriting by developing his motor skills. The following activities are fun and helpful; your child will enjoy playing and at the same time he’ll be indirectly improving his handwriting:
Reduce the time your child spends in front of the computer and video games, and let him play outdoors. As much as it can sound weird, crawling and climbing will indirectly improve his handwriting.
Let your child do activities that require hand-eye coordination, such as badminton, tennis, baseball, etc. And play with your child some fun clap songs.
Let your child help you with cooking: heading dough, rolling it out, cutting it, etc.
Make a lot of crafts with your child, because activities that involve paper cutting, folding, gluing and drawing, are the best way to practice fine motor skills.
You should know that activities such as lacing, tying, buttoning and snapping are important life skills that help to strengthen some muscles used for handwriting. So let your child do them by himself.
Ensure for your child a good writing environment; make sure he has a good chair and table at the right height for comfortable writing. Show him how to sit with a correct posture, rest his arms on the table, hold the writing instrument and keep his torso in the right position.
To improve legible and quick handwriting let your child practice using different kinds of pencils with different thicknesses and grips.