Exercises to Improve Handwriting Skills &
The Handwriting Without Tears Program
 

     The following activities will to help your child develop the precision, balance, and hand-eye coordination that are needed to perform the fine-motor skills used in handwriting:

  • Help your child learn to manage such everyday skills as tying and lacing shoes, buttoning clothes or zippering jackets.
  • Have your child play with clay or play-dough to strengthen the major muscles used in handwriting.
  • Encourage play with Lego's, miniature cars, small blocks, action figures, and other small toys.
  • Do puzzles together.
  • Provide creative artwork that involves using stubby crayons, scissors, and finger paints, as well as tearing paper and using a hand held hole puncher..
  • Play games with your child that involve the handling of cards and small game pieces.
  • Have your children sort collections of small objects such as different types of shells or sort coins into stacks of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
     Remember, every child has a different timetable in acquiring the fine-motor skills needed for handwriting. The more your child uses his or her fingers in activities, the sooner they will acquire these skills.

I found this website article to be very helpful:
Five Ways to Help with Handwriting

 

Handwriting Without Tears

     There is a good handwriting program called Handwriting without Tears program, developed by Jan Z. Olsen, OTR, a handwriting specialist with more than 25 years of experience helping children learn to write. This curriculum emphasizes top-to-bottom letter formation. The strategies used in the program make handwriting successful and fun. Students are excited with their abilities and the work they produce.

   The program teaches children of all skill levels. The goal of this program is for handwriting to become a natural, automatic skill for children. Children learn to write in developmental stages:

  • Pre-Writing Readiness.
     
  • Printing capital letters and numbers.
     
  • Printing lowercase letters.
     
  • Cursive handwriting.

    The unique teaching tips and creative workbooks in the HWT program eliminate problems with letter formation, reversals, neatness, sentence spacing, and cursive letter connections. The style taught in HWT is a simple, vertical style that makes handwriting easy for children to master. By using HWT children learn the mechanics of handwriting and they can write with ease and confidence. When the process of writing is easy, children are able to finish their work, give complete answers, and express what they are thinking.

For more information, click on the link below:

Handwriting Without Tears