• IMPROVING ILLEGIBLE HANDWRITING  

    Children are not able to write well until they have developed their fine motor skills.  Fortunately, these skills improve easily with practice.  Use the following activities to help your young child develop the precision, balance, and eye-hand coordination that is needed to perform the fine motor skills used in handwriting:

    • Give your child clay or play dough to play with.  This will help strengthen the major muscles used in handwriting.
    • Encourage your child to play with Legos, miniature cars, small blocks, action figures and other small toys.
    • Do puzzles with your child.
    • Provide creative art projects that involve using crayons, marking pens, scissors  and finger paints.  Tearing paper for an art project is also a good activity.
    • Play games with your child that involve the handling of cards and small game pieces.
    • Ask your child to sort collections of loose coins into stacks of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.
    • Help your child to learn to manage everyday skills, such as tying and lacing shoes and buttoning/ unbuttoning clothes.

    Remember, every child has a different timetable in acquiring the fine motor skills needed for handwriting. The more your child uses fingers in activities, the sooner these skills will be acquired.