7 Ways To Improve Your Kid's Handwriting

One of the most important things that always stays with a person and defines them is their handwriting. Writing is a task that we learn as kids and improve over time. Parents try to give thick crayons to their kids to make sure that they learn how to hold a pencil and then, have better handwriting. Cursive writing books stay with their kids for years to make sure their handwriting comes out as creative and tidy as it can but did you know that there are more than these two ways to improve your child's handwriting at an early age?

Now that everything is becoming digital, people are getting out of touch of having to write everything themselves using a pen and paper. However, institutions like schools and colleges are still sticking to the old fashioned way of writing i.e. using a pen/pencil and paper.

This article focuses on ways to improve your child's handwriting at an early age so that they never have a messy notebook.

1. The right age to start writing:

Most parents give less time to researching the right age for their kids to start using a pencil to start writing. The exact age to teach your child to hold a pencil and start writing is 4 to 6 because this is the age when children develop the dynamic tripod grasp i.e. using two fingers and a thumb to hold a pencil (as shown in the picture).

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2. The right way to hold a pencil:

The above point brings us to our next step i.e. the right grip for holding a pencil. The grip determines how your handwriting is going to look and hold much stress your child will be putting on their fingers to write.

While there are a lot of grips like dynamic quadrupod, lateral quadrupod, lateral tripod, etc, the most common and best way to hold a pencil is Dynamic tripod. If your child has a different grip, it is never too late to correct them.

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3. Check the pressure:

If you see that the handwriting is getting imprinted on the next paper so that signifies the amount of pressure your child is putting on in writing. It is important that they relax their hand while writing so that their hand doesn't get tired too early while writing.

4. Fine Motor Skills:

The main reason why a child ends up having a bad handwriting for life is that they never got to work enough on their fine motor skills.

What are Fine Motor Skills?

Fine motor skills are responsible for your smaller movements using hands, fingers, feet and toes. Some of the examples of fine motor skills include picking up things using fingers (like a pencil), doing puzzles, using tools or instruments, eating, brushing teeth, tying shoelaces, etc.

Improving your child's fine motor skills improves their hand coordination (and hand-eye coordination) and they learn to have a better grip, make alphabets clearer, match the dots in their cursive handwriting books and therefore, have a better letter formation.

So, how to Improve your child's Fine Motor Skills?

5. Be Patient & Encouraging

While teaching your child to improve their handwriting, you need to make sure to teach them one thing at a time. If they are making too many mistakes and you tell them all the mistakes at once, they will not be able to grasp that information and being poked every time after being told what they're doing wrong will only lead to low self-confidence and losing interest. Teach your kid one alphabet at a time. Make sure you improve one mistake each day instead of teaching them 10 things at a time.

6. Give them an idea of proportion and size:

Sometimes a written note looks untidy because it has no uniformity in the spacing and sizing of alphabets. To make sure your child’s handwriting looks tidy, teach them about the proportions of alphabets, the difference between capital and small letters and spacing words.

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7. Repeat Every day

Once you know how to work on improving your child’s handwriting, all you need to do is repeat the process.