Fine motor skills help us in the movements of small muscles in our hands and wrists. Children rely on these skills to do key tasks in school and in everyday life such as opening lunch boxes, using pencils, pens, scissors and so on.
The best part about fine motor skills is that these skills can be developed at any time during the day. Whether it’s folding clothes, mixing clay, using a spoon to eat, cutting paper with scissors, anything! These fine motor skills have a huge impact on not just your child’s handwriting, but their overall development.
Now, handwriting is not just about putting pencil or pen to paper. It involves multi-tasking. Handwriting is one of the most important fine motor skills that every child needs to develop.
Bad handwriting often stems from a lack of fine motor skill development. Some of the common handwriting problems children face are wrong pencil grasp, poor letter formation, poor sizing of letters, difficulty in copying words, irregular spacing of words, confusion over direction, poor pencil pressure, inconsistency in upper- and lower-case writing, etc.
So which are the fine motor skills that are essential for improving handwriting in children?
One is in-hand manipulation. This basically means, being able to pick up an item (such as a pencil or pen) and move it around with the hand. In-hand manipulation affects letter formation. Another is visual motor skill – when the child can identify how much pressure should be applied to the writing tool.
1. Hold the pencil/pen correctly
The most important aspect is to hold the writing tool correctly.
The writing tool should be held in place with the thumb, index and middle fingers. You could also model this behaviour and help the child learn how to hold a pencil or a pen properly.
2. Relax the grip
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