Activities to Help Improve Children's Writing

If a child is having difficulties with writing, such as pen control, writing stamina, size and neatness of writing. The automatic thing that people often do is practise more writing, while this does have a place, practising more writing doesn't always resolve the problem.

It can also become boring for the child, which can result in tension between the parent and child. Thinking laterally, it's useful to break the skill of writing down and make sure the physical elements required for writing are present. Being able to write involves lots of different components, including fine and gross motor control. So rather than do more writing practise, try some other fun activities instead. Set up some play based activities, knowing that while being fun they may also help your child's writing. 

To be able to write you need to have body stability, the shoulder girdle needs to be stable so that the hand is controlled enough to write. Activities that involve some weight bearing through the arms develop this, have fun doing any of these activities....

•  Wheelbarrow walking 
•  Crab walking on all 4s 
•  Using monkey bars.
•  Crawling around on all fours! My children used to play lots of animal games, pretending to be dogs, cats, or even giraffes! Be warned that this activity also helps wear out knees on trousers too!

Once body stability is developed then it's time to work on fine motor control and there are lots of activities that can be done to help this. Activities that require using fingers to do small, detailed things, or activities that strengthen the fingers and thumb are both useful to help with writing. Below are some suggestions of different activities to try.

Threading sets - if you don't have a specific set you can make your own with string and pasta, start with bigger pasta tubes and then you can progress onto smaller macaroni. If you want a purpose to the activity making pasta necklaces is great, you can paint the pasta once you've made them too, metallic paint looks particularly good. However if you do want to buy something ready made this Galt Button Threading works well.
  

Air dry clay Christmas decorations

Playdough - kneading, rolling, shaping all involve using the hands, which will develop strength and manipulation. You can obviously use shop bought play dough if you have it, but it's also simple to make at home. On our main site we have a recipe for microwave play dough. If your children are a bit old for playdough try making things from Air Dry Modelling Clay instead.  



Tweezers - using tweezers like those in a stamp collectors kit, or just picking up different items with tweezers, transferring them from one place to another. The game operation is also very good for this, if you have a Toy Story fan this is great.
   

Toys – such as Lego, Playmobil, Polly Pocket, Sylvanian Family. Where playing involves small pieces to use, and manipulate.

Playing with playmobil space station