Pre-writing Skills
Preschool & Kindergarten
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Helpful Defininations:
Fine Motor
Fine motor skills are the ability of a student to pick up, release, hold, move and use objects in their hand (i.e. fork, marker, etc.).
Handwriting/Graphomotor
The ability of the student to develop age appropriate writing skills through the development of muscular movements required for handwriting.
Areas of handwriting include: formation, size, proportion, spacing, line placement, upper and lowercase consistency and orientation of letters and words.
Understanding Fine Motor Development
Handwriting, typing, and other fine motor tasks actually require the entire body to be engaged.
All of these skills begin at birth when your tiny baby is taking in all the sensory information around them. Over the first few years of life they learn to focus their hearing and sight on what is important and ignore other things, then they learn about touch and movement.
As a child grows and learns to roll, crawl, and walk they are gaining the strength to stabilize their core muscles, shoulders and develop the arches in their hands. All of these are vital components to being able to sit in a chair, hold a pencil, and use their fingers to form lines and curves.
First steps to supporting a struggling student
Always make sure the desk and chair are a good fit so the student's trunk is supported for writing tasks Desk and Chair fit
If the student...
struggles to maintain body position
switches hands when coloring, or fatigues easily
struggles to focus and attend to projects
seems to jump all over the page when drawing/ coloring, or struggles to track small objects in their environment
labyrinths can be a fun way to center the visual system and calm the body
has a hard time holding the writing tool
doesn't seem to have enough strength to complete writing of coloring tasks
Suggested sequence of handwriting
preschool handwriting sequence
Handwriting sequence for Kindergarten
How do we know the supports are working?
Please select 1-3 supports and implement them for 3 weeks while tracking the student's response. This data will help adjust supports and during the evaluation process if that is a necessary step.
Please explore the "At Home" section of the website for helpful ideas that can be shared with families.
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