Handwriting Tips / Handwriting skills for children

 Handwriting Tips / Handwriting skills for children

Key points

Handwriting is an important part of literacy and an essential skill for life.

For toddlers and preschoolers, handwriting is about drawing and scribbling with crayons, pencils, and chalk.

Older children learn formal handwriting at school.

Everyday activities like drawing, writing shopping lists, and writing on cards can help your child learn to write.

Why handwriting is important

Handwriting is an essential life skill.

For example, children who can write smoothly and clearly are better able to use writing to record their thoughts and ideas. When handwriting is automatic, their ideas can flow. Children also need to write for many school lessons and tasks.

Handwriting skills help children develop reading and spelling skills. It also helps with the ability to recall and remember information.

And we need handwriting skills to do many tasks later in life like writing birthday cards, filling in forms, and signing important documents.

How children learn to handwrite

Handwriting is a complex skill that develops over time. To learn handwriting children need to combine fine motor skills, language, memory and concentration. They also need to practice and follow instructions.

Handwriting starts with scribbling and drawing then moves on to forming letters and words.

You can encourage your child to develop an interest in handwriting by giving them opportunities to draw, scribble and write. This prepares your child for the formal handwriting they’ll learn at school.

Left-handed writing in children

Most children choose to write and draw with their right hands. But some children choose their left hands. This is OK. When children choose their left hand to write with, there’s no need for them to swap hands.

Toddlers: drawing and early handwriting skills

Drawing is the start of handwriting for toddlers. Toddlers generally begin to show an interest in drawing with a crayon or chalk from about two years.

Here are a few ideas to get your toddler drawing, scribbling, and ‘writing’:

Have crayons and paper, or chalk and blackboard, handy. Small chunks of chalk or crayons encourage your child to use a fingertip grip. This helps your child learn to hold a pencil.

Encourage your child to draw things that interest them. For example, if your child likes insects, you could draw a centipede and your child could add a lot of legs. Or on a rainy day you could draw a big cloud and your child could draw rain falling down.

Give your child activities that involve squeezing and pinching things. This could be threading big beads, squeezing and pinching playdough into shapes, and building with blocks and Duplo. This helps your child develop the hand muscles needed for using pencils.

Prop up your child’s drawing surface so that it’s on an angle. You could use an easel or blackboard. This helps your child make downward strokes, which they need to be able to do for writing later on.

Avoid felt-tip markers and pencils. It can be hard for your toddler to hold these until they’ve developed the small hand muscles needed for a better grip.

Preschoolers: getting started with handwriting

Children usually start to draw straight and circular lines in the preschool years. Your preschooler might even be putting these lines and shapes together to draw people and objects. Your preschooler might also be starting to form letters.

Plenty of opportunities to draw will help your child keep developing the skills needed for handwriting. Here’s how to help:

Keep giving your child chunky crayons and chalk until they develop the finger and thumb grip needed to hold a pencil.

Encourage your child to trace simple top-to-bottom and left-to-right lines on a page, trying to stay on the lines all the way to the end. Make up a story to add interest to the activity – for example, ‘Help this puppy find the way home’.

Practise drawing anticlockwise circles that start at the top of the page. This is the pattern we use to form letters.

As your child gets more control over the crayon or pencil, encourage them to draw simple stick figure people. If you put your child’s pictures on the fridge or wall, they’ll feel proud of their work.

Help your child to recognise and write their name by helping them to trace over the letters of their name. At first you might need to put your hand over your child’s hand to help them.

Help your child learn the alphabet sequence. A fun way to learn is by clapping your hands in a steady rhythm while you say the letters together. Doing this with music or singing the alphabet together can also help.

Give your child opportunities to write and draw with other materials. For example, your child could draw lines in sand or mud, trace over letters on signs with their finger, form 3D letters from playdough, and so on. Take photos of these drawings if you want to print them out and display them.

Handwriting education at school

During the first two years of school, your child will learn to:

form letters

recognise and spell frequently used words

put spaces between words

write letters and words in a similar size and in a line

write about familiar events.

Children develop their handwriting ability at different rates, but most children have mastered these basic skills within the first two years of school. From Year 2 on, children start to write more complex sentences and write about their experiences.

Handwriting: encouraging your school-age child

Here are a few tips to encourage your school-age child’s handwriting:

Make a place for writing at home. Have a stable chair and a surface at the level of your child’s belly button. If your kitchen table is too high, you could use a cushion or tall chair to raise your child higher, with a footstool to support your child’s feet.

Ask your child’s teacher for a sample sheet with the starting points for each letter clearly marked. This can help your child practise at home.

To help your child learn to form a letter, write it lightly and correctly yourself and get your child to trace over your letter. Show your child where to start drawing the letter by putting a green dot at the starting point and a red one at the finishing point.

Say the letter’s name and practise saying the letter sound with your child as they draw or trace the letter.

Use everyday opportunities to practise writing. For example, get your child to add items to the family shopping list, write notes to grandparents, help with birthday and other cards, or make labels with post-it notes.

Make it fun. Use a stick to draw large letters in the ground or at the beach and fill the letters with pebbles or shells. You could use non-permanent markers on a window to trace a letter over many times. Bath crayons are also good for this activity.

Signs of handwriting problems in early school-age children

Learning to write involves a combination of skills and abilities and an understanding of language. If your child is having difficulty with one or more of these skills, they might have some trouble with learning handwriting.

Here are some early signs that your child is having difficulty developing the skills to handwrite at school. Your child:

still swaps hands while drawing or handwriting during the first year of school. Most children prefer using one hand for drawing before they reach school, but some children have started school when this happens

writes slowly or has difficulty drawing letters correctly. Your child might need some help developing motor skills to make smooth, careful movements

grips a pencil differently from the way they were taught or they don’t have a strong pencil grip. Poor pencil grip can slow down your child’s handwriting progress and make it hard for them to complete work in a reasonable time

and lacks interest in or avoids drawing and handwriting. Your child might lose interest in writing if they aren’t confident about drawing or their writing isn’t as advanced as their classmates’ writing

has untidy handwriting. This might look like reversed letters, letters not correctly closed, inconsistent letter size, letters that don’t sit on the line and inconsistent spacing between letters and words

doesn’t seem to follow the teacher’s instructions while learning to write. Your child might have trouble concentrating, paying attention or understanding the teacher’s instructions.

If you notice these signs, it’s possible that your child can’t clearly see the board, their own writing or the print in books. Or your child might have additional learning needs that affect handwriting development.

Getting help with handwriting

Talk with your child’s teacher or your GP if you’ve noticed your child having difficulty with handwriting skills. Your GP might recommend you make an appointment with an occupational therapist, audiologist or optometrist.

Children with handwriting difficulties might need extra help and aids. These might include:angled writing boards

chunky pencils

pencil grips

paper with coloured dotted lines, bold lines or raised tactile lines.

An occupational therapist can let you know what aids will help your child.

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Handwriting apps

You can get handwriting apps for tablets and smartphones. Handwriting apps can be useful, so long as your child uses them only as an extra option for handwriting practice, rather than as a replacement.

It’s also important to make sure that any apps you’re interested in use the handwriting script that’s taught at your child’s school. It might be a good idea to talk with your child’s teacher before you decide on a handwriting app for your child.