Handwriting Improvement for kids: Effective Practice Routines

Find effective practice routines to enhance your handwriting skills. Good handwriting is about sizing, spacing, alignment, improving legibility, and proper pen & hand position. To improve handwriting, you may also have to address handwriting issues and break bad habits. Here are fun exercises and creative tools that will help make your child’s handwriting beautiful.

Importance of Handwriting

Having a good handwriting is a sign of success. Mahatma Gandhi said “Good Handwriting is the result of Good Education.”

However, the fact is that children are spending less time handwriting (and are typing more on electronic gadgets).

My eldest son has very poor worst handwriting. I think he started off with a bad grip to begin with, and then we did not spend much time on him to help him improve his handwriting.

And when your child has poor handwriting, their grades in school can suffer merely because their teacher can’t read what they’ve written.

Cursive writing used to be a big deal at one time. However, it doesn’t matter much whether your child writes in print or cursive, as long as you can read what it says.

What is more important is that your child writes well.

There are several benefits of making your children practice handwriting using writing tools/toys and formal handwriting sheets:

• It improves your child’s fine motor skills due to the writing activities or fun activities which involve movement of fingers (like playing with play dough). Fine Motor Skills is the ability to control small precise movements with the fingers, wrists and hands, and plays an important role in a child’s handwriting.
• Good handwriting worksheets have numbers and arrows on each alphabet to aid in writing. This also helps children learn about proportion and how to space the various letters between the lines.
• Regular practice will improve your kids handwriting. So make your children write the alphabets on a sheet of paper and get them to practice their handwriting.

Why Improve Handwriting: Various Benefits

Irrespective of whether your child practices print style or cursive style of handwriting, having a good handwriting helps.

Research done on hand-writing among students suggest that students with fluent handwriting produced superior written assignments which resulted in higher grades.

Writing with hand also stimulates the brain as it involves thinking and synchronization between movements of body.

Here are a few reasons that would emphasize on how handwriting becomes a source of written expression and life skills beyond the use in classroom and academics.

1. Helps identify, learn and create letters just the right way

Each alphabet has a particular shape and a way of creation. When children write, they have to follow that style. This gives an opportunity to the students to comprehend every alphabet and give it a perfect identity, thereby adding on to valuable learning. Ultimately it results in increased legibility of the handwriting.

2. Increases neural activity

Each time a child writes, the hand is instructed by the brain to perform a writing action. The coordination between the brain and the motor activities gets activated involving syncing both the hemispheres of brain. Handwriting is therefore called brain writing, and distinct styles of writing (having their own unusual importance) affirm the statement to the full.

3. Assists Students with disorders like ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

Children with disabilities like Dyslexia and Dysgraphia have troubles grasping letters. They might develop confusion in identities of letters having similar shapes and ways of creation like the alphabets “b” and “d”. Therefore, practicing to write by using charts, symbols, graphs, pictures etc. helps students deal with their dyslexic tendencies easily.

4. Develops spatial and visual skills

To attain a good and legible handwriting, correct spacing between letters and words is essential. Regular practice of writing with hand helps in developing spatial skills which ultimately enhances the visualization to read better, remember well and memorize effectively.

Handwriting helps to obtain the fluency in language (either language in which the writer writes), makes the interaction and communication convenient, and results in improved mental effectiveness of an individual. It also adds to speed of regular writing. Thus, different styles of handwriting have their own importance and are certainly incomparable with the each other’s benefits.

chool going students can get better marks in examinations because they can write better with our handwriting course; better written answer sheet are readable by all teachers.Handwriting develops better personality with good writing speed and style and also good writing style tells about your Professionalism and can impress anyone like your boss, client, and teacher.

It makes you look more cultured and competent, which can be a big advantage. Suppose, If you are in marketing field then it is a great weapon to impress your client. Handwriting is the basic tool while taking notes in the classroom or meetings, tests, doing class-work or homework. Videos and Worksheets teach individuals and kids to write Better Handwriting. This program helps to improve handwriting and still write fast & effectively.

Handwriting is important for taking notes and writing test essays. Both speed and legibility are essential for good grades, so it’s in your best interest to learn to write neatly and in a way that doesn’t fatigue your hand quickly. A student’s poor handwriting which includes both quantity & quality of writing can affect the very ability to express oneself.

Skill Developed Through Handwriting

Handwriting is a practice that involves activities of both the brain and the body. It has a number of benefits to be drawn and so it constitutes a significant place in the elementary education. It develops some of the very important skills in an individual. Few of these skills are discussed as under:

1. Vision

While practicing handwriting, an individual converts his thoughts into words. These thoughts are a reflection of one’s education, understanding and knowledge. A good thinking ability develops a sound vision. An individual who has a good vision also has an added intellect, an identity among masses and increased performance in all activities (for example: studies, sports, co-curricular activities etc.)

2. Retention

Researchers have proved that handwriting helps in understanding and remembering things for a longer period of time. Through handwriting, learning the language and subject becomes more convenient as all the information gets stored in the mind. This process is called retention of data. This retained data can then be recalled easily whenever in need (like in examinations)

3. Communication

Handwriting is a form of written communication. An effective handwriting portrays a substantial influence on the reader. Not only this, handwriting also helps in attaining a high level fluency in verbal communication. No other method except handwriting can be as effective in increasing vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, way of writing and learning the language itself.

4. Balance

Handwriting requires a balance between the body movements and the activities of brain. This balance is achieved by mind and motor coordination in which the brain instructs to write and the body (specifically the hands) performs the action. Handwriting is therefore also referred to as brain writing. It is believed that that what we write comes from the conscious mind and how we write comes from the subconscious mind.

5. Emotion

Handwriting depicts the rationality of an individual. The handwriting evolves people into rational beings who are emotionally stable and can make effective decisions. These people have higher success ratios in their areas of participation.

So, despite the availability of various technological gadgets, handwriting holds an important position in the lives of students. It is still a major part of the curriculum and almost 70% of school assignments are still submitted and accepted in ink.

How to Improve Your Child’s Handwriting

Handwriting is a concern for most parents, and most parents worry when there kids are taught writing in school.

However, even kids need time to get used to writing and their handwriting eventually improves over time.

So if you feel your child’s handwriting is not up to the mark but its only his first few months in school, then you should not worry.

However, if it remains bad for an extended time, you will need to work on his handwriting and make them practice more.

Sometimes, its just a matter of holding the pencil correctly (most kids hold the pencil incorrectly when they begin).

Here are things that you could do to improve your child’s handwriting.

1. Get a Good Grasp
Hold your pencil towards the top, near the eraser, and try to write your name. It’s not easy, right? so, the grip is important. When you hold your pencil the correct way, writing is much easier. The best way to hold a pen or pencil is to let it rest next to the base of your thumb. Hold it in place with your thumb, and your index and middle fingers. See the photo below.

2. Let the Lines Be Your Guide
Lined paper is your friend so practice more often on lined papers in the beginning. Those lines can help you create letters that are the right size and proportion. Proportion means that one thing is the right size compared with the other. So your lowercase “a” should be half the height of a capital “A.”

Be sure to fill up the lined space completely. Those capital letters should stretch from the bottom line to the top one. Lines also can keep you writing straight instead of uphill or downhill. When you don’t have lines, like when you’re creating a poster, you can use a ruler and draw light pencil lines so your title will be the right size and look perfectly straight.

3. Write Slowly
Write slowly in the beginning. If your child’s writing is hard to read or they erase a lot, try slowing down a little. For many kids, going slower solves the problem. If you rush, it’s hard to control where you stop and start your letters, and you end up making more mistakes. Lot of kids erase so hard that it almost tears the paper and makes the page messy.

4. Lower the Pressure
Some kids press down really hard when they write. That makes it harder to make the smooth lines needed for writing, especially cursive. Tell you child to go easy; let them not grip the pencil as tightly and not apply lot of pressure. This way they will also break fewer pencil points and not waste more time sharpening the pencils.

5. Play Games
Games can improve your handwriting, especially those that you will find in activity books. Lots of games require you to write or draw pictures. So even though it’s not official schoolwork, you’re still using the skills you need to control your pencil better. In addition, to have better control of how your hands move, encourage your child to play games like Jenga or Don’t Spill the Beans.

Handwriting Practice and Pencil Grips

There are four areas of art of figures that lead to legibility: Slant, Size, Spacing, and Shape. By focusing more on these aspects, children can improve their drawing other art creations.

However, the first step is to learn to grip a pencil correctly.

Holding the pencil wrongly, can affect their handwriting. Correct pencil grip will allow your child to write quickly and smoothly, while a tight or incorrect grip can hinder writing.

So, as parents you need to help your child to develop good pencil grip.

The Tripod Pencil Grasp: This pencil grip is the one that is most recommended by schools. The pencil should be positioned so that there is equal pressure between the thumb, the side of the middle finger and the tip of the index finger. All fingers are bent slightly. When a pencil is held correctly, the thumb and forefinger form an oval when a child holds the pencil. Tension in the hand or fingers indicates weak fine motor skills.

Practice Handwriting

Have your child practice writing for 15 minutes a day. This can be done during regular homework time. Start with letters that are more difficult and work your way through the alphabet. Make sure they know how to hold their pen or pencil correctly. This will help their hand relax and not tire as quickly. Pens or pencils should be held with the thumb and forefinger pinching the pen, and the middle finger can go underneath as a rest.

Make sure your child is writing each word correctly. You can find notebooks with the alphabet written inside the cover, and these can be a guide. Most will show the correct way to write each letter. Give your child the tools they need to be successful in school.

Maintaining a good posture is also important while writing. Bad posture, lowered chin creates stress on the body so don’t let your kids slouch while writing.

Read: How to improve your cursive writing

Handwriting teacher training courses in Mumbai.

Graphology Institute World School of Handwriting
249 Kripa Niwas, 1st Floor,, Sion East, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400022, India