Introducing pencil work before the muscles of the hand are developed can lead to poor pencil grasp, unnecessary fatigue, forming letters from the bottom up.
Motor patterns are developed through repeated practice - an incorrect pattern can be learned as well as a correct one.
Literacy can be learned without pencils!
Typically developing children, by the age of 6 or 7 years old, are fairly competent at writing legibly when instructed with a traditional handwriting curriculum.
However, more and more we are seeing typically developing children with delayed fine motor skills and decreased hand strength because they are not using their hands in ways that strengthen their muscles.
As a result we are seeing a variety of inefficient grasp patterns which affect handwriting and fine motor skills.