Best Handwriting for childrens

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HANDWRITING SKILL TRAINING
Presented By Aastha Goel
Never lose an oportunity of seeing anything
beautiful, for beauty is Gods handwriting
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It is a complex process of handling language
by pencil grip, letter formation, and body
posture. Handwriting efficiency requires mastery
of multiple skills, including vision,
coordinating the eyes, arms, hands, memory,
posture, and body control, as well as the task of
holding a pencil and forming letters.
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•  
• Legibility? (All or most of the words written
  can't be read out of context.)
• Neatness? (The handwriting is messy or poorly
  controlled.)
• Comfort? (The child is experiencing pain, strain
  or discomfort when writing.)
• Pressure? (S/he is pressing too hard or not hard
  enough, or pressure within one piece of writing
  is variable.)
• Speed? (S/he writes very slowly, producing too
  little writing, or too fast, becoming
  inaccurate.)
• Motivation/enjoyment? (S/he is reluctant to write
  or gives up too easily.)

Main areas of concern? As parents or teachers say
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Signs and symptoms in the children with
handwriting difficulties 

• Children may exhibit strong verbal but
  particularly poor writing skills.
• Random (or non-existent) punctuation.
• Spelling errors
• Misinterpretation of questions 
• Disordered numbering and written number
  reversals.
• Generally illegible writing
• Inconsistencies mixtures of print and cursive,
  upper and lower case, or irregular sizes, shapes,
  or slant of letters

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• Inconsistent position on page with respect to
  lines and margins and inconsistent spaces between
  words and letters.
• Cramped or unusual grip, especially holding the
  writing instrument very close to the q paper, or
  holding thumb over two fingers and writing from
  the wrist.
• Talking to self while writing, or carefully
  watching the hand that is writing.
• Slow or labored copying or writing - even if it
  is neat and legible.

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WHAT GETS YOU WRITE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE PAPER ?

• Visual perceptual skills- The ability to
  interpret and use what is seen in the
  environment.
• Visual motor coordination - The ability to
  visually take in information, process it and be
  able to coordinate your physical movement in
  relation to what has been viewed.
• Orthographic coding To read and spell words .
• Kinesthetic Feedback Sensorial feedback from
  movement .
• Motor Planning and Execution

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• SIX PREREQUISITES THAT CHILDREN MUST HAVE BEFORE
  HANDWRITING BEGINS ARE
• Small muscle development
• Eye-hand coordination
• Ability to hold utensils or writing tools
• Capacity to smoothly form basic strokes such as
  lines and circles
• Letter perception, including the ability to
  recognize forms, notice likeness and differences,
  infer the movements necessary for the production
  of form and give accurate verbal descriptions of
  what is seen
• Orientation to printed language, which involves
  the visual analysis of letters and words along
  with right/left discrimination.

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NEUROBIOLOGY BEHIND HANDWRITING SKILLS
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• ASSESSMENT
• When evaluating the actual task of children's
  handwriting, following 4 areas are considered
• Domains of handwriting - copying, manuscript to
  cursive transition, ability to integrate auditory
  directions and a motoric response (dictation).
• Legibility components - letter formation, letter
  alignment, spacing, size and slant
• Writing speed - the number of letters written per
  minute
• Ergonomic factors - writing posture,
  upper-extremity, stability, mobility and pencil
  grasp pattern.

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SPECIFIC OUTCOME MEASURES.

• Beery VMI (ages 2-100)
• Test of Handwriting skills (ages 5 through 18-11)
• Minnesota Handwriting Assessment (1st and 2nd
  graders)
• ETCH (grades 1-6)

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WHAT TO TEACH FIRST/AREAS TO CONCENTRATE /GOALS

• Formation
• Line orientation
• Size
• Spacing
• Pressure

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FORMATION

• MULTI-SENSORY APPROACH
• Tactile boards, sandpaper, shaving cream,
  sand/sugar trays, dry erase crayons, chalk,
  wiggle pens, finger paint
• Color changing markers, gel bags, rainbow writing
• Have students form letters with eyes closed
• Handwriting without tears wet-dry-try
• Body writing

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LINE ORIENTATION

• Refer to lines by name (top, middle, bottom)
• Be consistent with paper usage
• Trace lines with finger, then with
  marker/highlighter
• Trace line with glue (raised line paper)
• Begin with vertical line, then move to circles,
  then letters
• Begin without drop letters?

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SIZE

• Teach tall, small, (drop) letters in groups
• Practice identifying size variance using objects,
  people
• Worksheet where students fill in tall, small,
  drop letters
• Words with only small or only tall letters
• Mixed words highlight small or tall letters

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SPACING

• Student points out spaces between pre-written
  words
• Practice spacing between people, objects
• Use pennies, spacers, etc.
• Highlight spaces

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PRESSURE

• Practice pressure on students arm/hand
• Practice pressure on play-doh
• Write on tracing sheet , crepe, carpet, etc.
• Feel the lines on the back of the paper
• Weighted pencil

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• Handwriting Intervention
• Occupational therapy frames of reference that
  apply to designing handwriting intervention
  programs include
• Neurodevelopment
• Sensory integration
• Biomechanical ( motion, strength and endurance)
• Behavioral
• Acquisitional

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• Strength and Stability
• In order for us to develop control over the
  smaller muscles of the hand we must have support
  or control in our trunk, and in all of the other
  joints leading up to the hand.
• The hand itself needs adequate strength to hold
  on to a writing utensil and isolate control in
  individual muscles.
• Watch for slumping, poor grasp pattern, or
  fatigue
• Activities For Shoulder and Postural Stability
• Animal walks that encourage weight bearing on the
  arms, i.e.. Crab walk or bear walk
• Slant boards
• Scool moves

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CRAB WALK
BEAR WALK
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Positioning
Feet and back supported at a 90 degree angle Desk
height about 2 inches above elbow resting at
side Sometimes a seatbelt can add extra stability
and help child to focus if needed
Slant boards
Slant boards can help with forearm and wrist
support needed to isolate finger movements. Clips
on slant boards can hold the paper in the
appropriate position (30-45 degree angle) if
bilateral coordination is difficult. Slant boards
can also improve posture and visual awareness
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Handwriting warm ups (Lets Practice!)
Brain gym, Scool Moves, and Yoga Calm programs
have an extensive program that can help integrate
body and mind to improve learning potential
Wood Pieces

• Learn the language of big line, little line, big
  curve and little curve
• Learn directionality-top, bottom, above, below,
  right, left
• Mat man teaches body awareness
• Laminated capital letter cards with perceptual
  activities on the back
• Make letters and shapes on the mat or on the floor

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HOW TO HOLD THE PENCIL ?
The pencil is pinched between the thumb pad and
the index finger pad. The pencil rests on the
middle finger. Can hold something in last 2
fingers. A-OK 1. Make the A-OK sign 2. drop or
tuck the other fingers 3. Place the pencil
between the thumb and index finger pads Pinch
and flip 1. Place pencil on table pointing away
from you. 2. Pinch pencil and pick it up. Pinch
the pencil where you should hold it-on the point
where the point meets the wood. 3. With other
hand hold the eraser and flip it around to the
top side of hand.
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ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE IN HAND MANIPULATIONS
TRANSLATION SHIFT ROTATION
Putting penny in piggy bank More ???????
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ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE GRASP PATTERNS
Playing with playdoh/putty (hiding objects in
putty or rolling into log and making shapes)
Form circles with thumb and index finger .
Playing tug of war with small strings, lace, etc.
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• GEOBOARDS
• QUICK MATCH
• HOLDING COTTON WITH TWEEZERS OR PASTA
• PINCHING THERAPUTTY WITH TWEEZERS TO MAKE SPIKES
  OF ALIEN
• PEGS ON BOARD
• NEEDLE AND THREAD
• WEIGHTED PEGS

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STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE VISUAL-MOTOR PERCEPTION

• Perceptual worksheets-tracing, mazes, finding
  hidden pictures, matching
• Visual models
• Verbal cues
• Different types of lined paper
• Scanning Tasks

ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE FINGER ISOLATION

• Use items to manipulate such as tongs to pick up
  marbles, coins or tokens, cotton balls or any
  small items.
• Cutting activities with scissors
• Finger puppets
• Keyboarding
• Songs that have different hand gestures or
  isolated finger motions
• Pressing gripper with different fingers at a time

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ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE ACCURACY

• Tracing or cutting on straight or curved lines
• Rainbow writing-repetitive tracing with different
  colors
• Bold lines
• Origamy
• Making figure of eight with thread around fingers
• Pattern plays /Creative Design
• Money game
• Skip writing
• Quilling
• Activities with bindi clubbed with other tasks

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ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE BILATERAL COORDINATION

1. Holding and turning paper when cutting
2. Tying shoes, buttoning, zipping
3. Stringing beads, Pearls and wires
4. Stabilizing paper when coloring
5. Bat and ball activities
6. Large screw and bolt activities
7. Brain gym warm ups
8. Double Doodle
9. Lazy eight exercises
10. Pipes and straws
11. Tracing alphabets
12. Tracing shapes , stencils , spirograph
13. Jodo blocks/ Jodo gyan

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THERAPUTTY TASKS

• Making small balls , clubbing into big ball with
  no creases
• Making alphabets , shapes, numbers on table on
  wall
• Writing on theraputty
• Specifically for strengthening
• We do activities on/against wall

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FINE MOTOR ART

• Pictures with seeds and beans (use fingers or
  tweezers)
• Tearing, and crumpling paper to glue in the
  pictures
• Paint or draw using an easel
• Collages either cutting or tearing the pictures

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• WRIST EXERCISES ???
• THERABAND EXERCISES ???
• BALL GAMES ???

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BRAIN GYM EXERCISES
Double Doodle
Lazy Eight Exercises
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MORE TO GO , ITS NOT THE END

• Hook ups
• Elephants
• Cross Crawls
• Thinking Caps (Ears)
• Write or Draw with non dominant hand
• Massage on tragus
• Massage on clavicle

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What Is The Use Of Brain Gym ?

• Brainstem Reactive state
• Vestibular system Spatial Judgement
• Limbic System - Emotions
• Neo- Cortex- Cognition

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• IMPORTANT TERMS
• AUTOMATICITY Ability to do things without
  occupying mind .
• LATERALITY Preference of one side of the body.(
  left handded, right handded)
• DIRECTIONALITY Top to bottom , left to right
• BILATERAL COORDINATION - The ability to use both
  sides of the body together in a smooth,
  simultaneous, and coordinated manner.
• BILATERAL INTEGRATION - The neurological process
  of integrating sensations from both body sides
  the foundation for bilateral coordination
• DEXTERITY Fine motor skills
• BODY AWARENESS- The mental picture of ones own
  body parts, where they are, how they interrelate,
  and how they move.
• VISUAL SPATIAL PROCESSING SKILLS- Perceptions
  based on sensory information received through the
  eyes and body as one interacts with the
  environment and moves ones body through space.

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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LEFT HANDED WRITERS AND RIGHT
HANDED WRITERS

• Right handers use the elbow as a pivot point to
  move pencil across the page
• Left handers move their entire forearm to move
  the pencil across the page

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PROBLEMS WITH WRITING LEFT HANDED

• Smearing ink
• Digging pencil into paper
• Covering writing and decreased visibility for
  spacing
• Increased fatigue
• Decreased stability for writing

• ACCOMMODATING LEFT HANDED CHILDREN
• Group left handed children together
• Teach correct body position (body to right of
  paper)
• Teach correct paper position/slant
• Teach proper grip (tripod), 1 and ½ inches back
  from pencil tip
• Keep hand below line that is being written on
• It is OK for letters to slant slightly backwards

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THANKS FOR THE PARTICIPATION GOD BLESS