How to Support Handwriting Practice for Your Children
Handwriting is one of the biggest, most critical skills your children are going to learn, and whether they learn this at school for the first time or they learn it at home with you, you can be doing more to support their handwriting practice.
Handwriting or literacy tasks can be difficult and discouraging and that can lead to a poor engagement in homework as time moves forward. You want your children to be as engaged in their lessons at home as you would want them to be at school. Helping them with letter formations and ensuring that they feel confident and comfortable holding a pen or a pencil is your job as a parent as much as it is your teacher's job.
If you consider the fact that teachers have 30 children at a time to handle at once, they can't always keep an eye on whether or not your child is slipping under the radar because their handwriting is not perfect. With the introduction of technology, handwriting practice is largely going out of fashion. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be keeping up with this very vital skill. So we've put together a big list of tips on how you can support handwriting practice for your child.
Make it a fun challenge. Making sure that you add a challenge to help your child to have a sense of achievement with their handwriting can really help to promote engagement. Learning at home can often feel like a drag because they're already learning at school and they don't want to have to do more than sit around at home if they can help it. You can set up a scavenger hunt by hiding pictures or words around the room, the garden, or the house for your child to find, and they have to write them down. When you change it from a learning lesson into a game, they're doing a lot more learning without having any of the stress of it.
Put writing in your pretend playlist. If your child loves to play pretend, then why not use this as a good way to support handwriting practice? You could write shopping lists, you could write letters, you could open a shop and write a menu. You could even help them to create a policeman's checklist or write a king or Queens list of rules for their Kingdom. The only rule? No technology allowed. It all has to be done with pens and pencils.
Use board games to help. Board games are a great way to offer a unique perspective on the development of handwriting skills. Letter Jenga is a great way to begin. All you have to do is write a letter on each Jenga block and for every turn practice that letter or write a word starting with that letter. The person who has the most words at the end of the game, wins. You could even do a silent Guess Who. So when you're playing Guess Who, instead of asking the questions, you have to write them down and on a piece of paper next to them. They have to write down their questions in a way that is legible for you to be able to answer them while writing them down too.
Model the behavior yourself. If you want your child to do more handwriting things at home, then it's time to make sure that you also have a pen and paper in your hand at all times so that you can model the behavior. If they see you writing shopping lists, they will copy you. If they see you writing, doing puzzles or crosswords, they will copy you, too. If you model the behavior and demonstrate the importance of handwriting skills, your children will also get involved and everybody will be able to beautify their handwriting at home.
Incorporate movement. Some children do not learn by sitting and writing at a desk. It's just the way of the world. For kids that love to move, incorporating handwriting practice into physical activity is a great option. Ask them to plan out an obstacle course. They can stand at the table and draw the obstacle course and write out what is needed at each step. You can even ask them to create a score sheet with names and stats when playing games. You can provide them with a movement challenge that starts with the letter they are practicing. So for example, they can write down S for star jumps or F for frog leaps. Whichever way you want to do it, your children will be able to get more involved.
Make it a daily habit. As adults, we use handwriting throughout the day for a range of tasks, so why not get the kids involved? When you're doing your weekly shopping list, have your children at the table, helping you to create the list, write down everything and even write a menu for the week. At the start of the school holidays, ask them to help you to write down the list of activities that they'd like to do.
