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Jan 18, 2017 · 3 min read

Many children enter primary school not being able to grip a pencil properly, a cause of frustration and discrimination. Furthermore, bad handwriting can be the cause of an identity issue: children may not feel represented by their own handwriting and this can emerge as a feeling of shame and lack of confidence in their abilities.

by Stefania Massafra

What is the underlying problem? And how do you learn to hold a pencil?

Primary school teachers play a major role since they are responsible for training and preparing your children for the new primary world.

We often encounter kindergarteners filling out pre-writing sheets, yet unable to perform simple tasks such as cutting out a piece of paper, tying their own shoes, holding a pencil properly or keeping a correct posture. Preventive measures can be implemented starting from 5 years of age (preparing a child at this stage so they’re truly ready for learning how to read and write) through exercises that develop the so-called fine manual abilities.

Read also Pre-graphism in primary school: Yes or no?

Here’s a simple and effective one:

Take a piece of Playdoh and let your children create a tower of small molded balls stacked on top of each other with only their thumb, index, and middle fingers.

Once you have exercised this fine movement of fingers, you can entertainingly teach them:

1. The Rules:

• For a proper posture of body, head, arms and hands; both hands! It’s important that they understand that writing occurs not only with your hands but also with your whole body. By adopting a proper posture and grip, they will be able to write properly without wasting as much energy and effort.
• Tell them to use all 10 fingers: thumb, index, and middle fingers hold the pencil, the remaining two slide the pencil on the paper and the other hand (left for right-handed and right for left-handed) is for keeping the paper in place and indicates where to write.
• The notebook, most of the times awkwardly used by children, shouldn’t be seen as a fixed tool but as something that can be moved according to their needs.

2. Fun exercises for a proper grip:

• Cut out a 1.5 cm from a piece of paper and have your child squeeze it to their palm with their pinky and ring finger, while the other three fingers (thumb index and middle finger) are used for gripping the pencil.
• Use simple colorful puffy construction corn blocks (you can easily find these on sale). Insert a pencil in one of these corn blocks and by following the action described at point three (using thumb, index and middle finger) tell your children to picture a roaring and yawning lion (opening and closing their fingers). This way, the act of closing the lion’s mouth with their three fingers will create an imprint on the corn block and their own personalized pencil grip. These puffy blocks are solutions for an anatomical fingerprint support, perfect for a proper grip, which will stimulate their sight and help them learn faster and better.

So our advice is not to ignore teaching a proper handgrip and posture at the cost of pre-writing exercises. Once your children are able to refine their fine manual abilities, then they will be more confident and better capable of dealing with the unknown primary school world :)

About author Stefania Massafra

Stefania Massafra was born in 1988. She graduated from The Sapienza University of Rome and majored in “Public Business Communication” and she is the Communication & Social Media Manager at Marshmallow Games. She loves art and nature. Ever since she was a little girl, she always believed that the best things in life can’t be seen nor touched but can be felt only with the heart.