Activities for Writing Readiness

If your child has started back to school, you that getting back into the school routine can be difficult. This can also translate to difficulties with activities that weren't practiced much over the summer such as writing. Here are some activities to get your school aged child back on track after a summer off or help your kindergartner get ready for a successful school year.

Weightbearing through hands and arms wakes up muscles for writing readiness and engages core muscle groups for attention and focus. Some activities to try:

• bear walks (from standing place hands on floor. With weight on arms, move forward. When your child masters moving forward, have them try it backward or with eyes closed.)
• crab walks (from seated position, place hands and feet on the floor and lift your bottom off the floor. After your child masters the movement, try crab walk races or games of crab soccer - remember, no hands!)
• Tug or war (you can use a sheet or blanket if a rope is not available. To make this activity more challenging, try it on an uneven surface such as piles of pillows or blankets. Just remember to have a soft landing zone in case you fall)
• Wall push ups, chair push ups, or desk push ups can also be used in a classroom setting where space is limited.
• Pushing hands together at midline or finger push ups can also be used in a classroom setting

Manipulating putty or playdough can also be helpful for writing readiness. Pulling and pushing the dough helps with finger strength and in hand manipulation skills as well as bilateral coordination.

Activities that promote thumb opposition and opening of webspace are particularly helpful for children with weak pencil grasps. Some activities to try include:

• Different shape hole punches (you want to make sure that your child has enough strength to operate the hole punch with one hand, maintaining thumb on top and pushing down.)
• Clothespin activities such as matching letters and shapes or writing words by hanging letters on a string or clipping to the edge of a box (make sure your child maintains his thumb on top and thumb meets the pad of the first finger)
• Beading activities
• Perler beads
• Using tongs to pick up progressively smaller pom poms, beads, or pieces of paper (make sure child has pinky side down with chopsticks or tongs on top of hand with action coming from thumb and first 2 fingers)
• small stickers (removing small stickers from a sticker sheet is a great bilateral coordination activity)

For pre-writing, having the right utensil is critical. Little pencils, crayons, and chalk pieces work best for little hands. Some activities to try include:

• chalk bit (broken pieces of chalk on a chalkboard or black construction paper)
• 'writing' with small sponge bits on a chalk board with water or painting a picture with small sponge bits 
• Using eye droppers for art projects or for measuring in science
• Using broken crayon bits for coloring

If you have activities that you use in your classroom or at home to prepare your student for writing in the new school year let me know! These are just a few of the ideas that I use in my practice and I am always looking for new activities to motivate my students.

  

Tips for Helping Your Left Handed Writer Succeed

As an occupational therapist, I see many children with fine motor and handwriting difficulties. Many of these children are left hand dominant and being left handed myself, I wanted to provide some tips for helping your left handed student in the classroom. Only 8-10 percent of the general population is left handed. The classroom is primarily setup for right handed learners and chances are, your left handed student is going to be taught by a right handed teacher. Here are some tips in helping the left handed students with writing success.

• Provide an additional copy of a worksheet or the writing stimulus to be copied on the right side of the paper - often times, worksheets are setup with the stimulus on the left. If a student is left handed, his or her hand covers the question they are to answer or the word they are to copy increasing writing time, because they have to lift up their hand or taxing working memory because they need to hold the information in their brain as opposed to being able to visual scan the stimulus as needed. This is particularly true with new spelling words, a question that requires multiple answers, or when putting information in sequence.

• Work backward through a notebook, provide loose-leaf paper for assignments, or copy of workbook pages - a left handed writer often has their hand resting on the binding of the book when trying to write. This can be extremely difficult for a novice writer. A flat surface is an easier surface to write on. A single sheet of paper is also easier to grade pencil pressure. A single sheet of paper also allows the left handed writer to turn their paper as needed.

• Provide adequate arm support for writing - in higher grades, desks and chairs are often attached with the arm support on the right side and entry into the desk on the left. Without adequate arm support during writing, the left handed writer may become fatigued more quickly. 

• Seat left handed writers next to each other or seat a left handed writer at the end of a row if you seat students at tables for written work decreasing the opportunity for bumping elbows with a neighbor

• Demonstrate writing and fine motor tasks as the left handed student would perform them - left handed students are in the minority and as such, things are often demonstrated from a right handed perspective. When learning a new task, this perspective can be frustrating. Instead of mirroring the task, the left handed student needs to utilize cognitive resources to reorganize the motor plan in their head and then proceed with the task.

If you have any questions or additional suggestions that have helped left handed students in your classroom please let me know and I would be happy to post them. Have a great return to school!!

Correlation Found between Handwriting and High Scores

Here is more food for thought from CNN on the handwriting debate. Follow the link below. Any thoughts or comments would be welcome! Connecting the Dots

Child Development, Movement, and Academic Learning

If we consider our ancestors and the evolution of our brain, we are descendants of nomadic people spending the majority of the time hunting and gathering with the majority of their time spent outdoors. Children played outside and learned through social play interactions and imitation of older children and adults.
Now, I am sure you are going to question what this has to with children in today's society. Our brains are still 'wired' to learn through movement which is evident in a child's achievement of developmental milestones. An infant child turns his head to localize the sound of his mother's voice. As a baby rolls onto his belly and activates his spinal muscles and coordinates muscles on both sides of the neck to extend symmetrically to maintain his head in midline. As he pushes his chest off of the ground and comes up onto hands and knees, he has an opportunity to learn more about his surrounding environment. As he rocks back and forth he provides his joints with information about where his body ends and the external environment begins. He can now free his hands and move into a sitting position to manipulate objects at midline. His eyes converge together to examine toys and he will bring objects to his mouth to learn more about them. As he starts to crawl, he will need to pair the left and ride sides of his body instead of pairing top and bottom when he was rocking (children that have difficulty separating the left and right side will often attempt crawling but will end up 'bunny hopping'. These children often abandon crawling at an early age). The external environment (mom calling his name, a toy lying just out of reach, a sibling running into the other room) will encourage baby to crawl. He will learn to diverge and converge his eyes as he crawls toward objects. He will then start to pull up to stand, cruise along furniture and other objects in the environment, and then walk. This upright position will free up the child's hands for more opportunities for object manipulation and will provide a more detailed perspective to the auditory and visual systems.
Unfortunately, more and more children are not going through these stages within the developmental norms that were established 15-20 years ago. There are many factors that contribute to this latency in development, however, I am going to focus on the environmental factors that can be changed for the sake of this blog. These factors include seats that prop children up in seated positions before their musculature is able to support their body, play yards, bouncy seats, exersaucers, car seats that snap in and out of the car, videos designed to keep baby occupied and quiet. Young children are being tuned out with computers, tablets, smartphones, and video games. This type of play does not promote social engagement, social pragmatics, or social problem solving leading to difficulties with a child's overall social interaction with other children. Video games do not provide the same movements required for fine motor manipulation and development of the fine hand musculature.
Babies learn through movement and exploration of the environment. Baby needs lots of opportunity for tummy time. By getting down on the floor with your child to you motivate them, encourage them, and provide opportunities for engagement, communication, and play. Children need to be given the opportunity to run, jump,climb, and swinging to continue development of body awareness and bilateral coordination and coordinate the sensory system.

Implications for the Classroom:

• Under development of spinal musculature makes it difficult for a student to sit still in their seat, stand still in line, or do written work without stabilizing themselves on the desk (leaning) or wrapping legs around their chair
• Poor coordination between eye convergence and divergence makes copying long passages from the board difficult
• poor sound localization, habituation of background noise, tuning in to salient auditory information (the teacher speaking) leads to difficulty following directions and completing tasks
• Poor development of hand musculature leads to difficulty with self-help skills such as tying shoes, snapping snaps, buttoning, and zipping. This can also lead to problems with drawing and writing in grade school.

The Debate over Handwriting - Should Cursive continue to be taught?

As the summer is winding down and thoughts of back to school is in the air, students are starting to prep for back to school. Summer reading lists are hopefully checked off and math packets are complete. But how many children practiced handwriting over the summer?
While the Common Core Standard no longer requires students to learn cursive, some educators are concerned of the impact this may have on our future. Check out this link from CNN regarding educator concerns
Many parents seek out handwriting instruction for their children outside of the classroom so that they can keep up with the written work load of the classroom. Most teachers report reducing handwriting instruction time due to needing to teach testing skills or computer skills. However, most tests including the PSSAs, PSAT, SAT, and ACT all have written portions, so teaching the fundamentals of handwriting is a basic necessity for success on these types of tests. While laptops on every desk in a college classroom may be the norm these days, in the 5th and 6th grade classroom this is not the case and our children are expected to take clear, legible, handwritten notes in the grade school classroom.
Handwriting is an acquired skilled. It needs to be taught. I feel that more research needs to be considered before handwriting is considered a lost art. Handwriting Without Tears is offering a free webinar about handwriting and how handwriting instructions supports the Common Core Standards and is a fundamental aspect of academic success.

Backpack Awareness - How can we lighten our students' load

The first day of school is just around the corner and you may (or may not) have started to buy school supplies for the upcoming school year. a backpack is usually a must have for students returning to school. You may not think of ergonomics when you are out shopping for a backpack, however, the fit, carrying style and weight of your child's backpack can have an impact on their health.You want to make sure that the backpack your child chooses and how they utilize it will keep them happy and healthy all year long.

Some tips for backpack use throughout the school year:

• When choosing a backpack, check the size and make sure it is an appropriate fit for your child
• Make sure all of the items that your child needs to carry fit comfortably into the backpack

•  Make sure your child's backpack is adjusted so that it is carried close to the body to avoid strain
• The weight of the load in the backpack should be 10% or less of your child's weight
• Make sure your child wears both straps to distribute the weight evenly

More information including handouts and a video can be found on the American Occupational Therapy Association website at  http://www.aota.org/en/Conference-Events/Backpack-Safety-Awareness-Day/Handouts.aspx

Some of Our Favorite Therapy Apps

There are apps for everything these days from cooking your favorite recipes and tracking exercise to flinging Angry Birds at some pretty tricky pigs. Apps can be a motivating tool to work on attention, memory, and handwriting. They can also be beneficial to help with transitions, remembering daily routines and schedules, and to help children maintain sensory regulation. Here is a short list of some of our favorite apps. Let us know what you think. 

• BrainWorks
  a sensory diet app that provides activity suggestions based on arousal level and environment. Custom exercises/ activities can be added as well.
• Letter School
  this app has different writing styles to choose from, uses interesting visuals and progresses in difficulty as you master each level
• MeMoves
  rhythmic exercises with relaxing background music and pictures. Great for decreasing anxiety and helping a revved up engine calm down
• Glow Coloring
  scan your favorite worksheet or coloring page and use vivid colors to complete it

What apps do you use to support your child? 

Has Technology Ruined Handwriting?

Here is an interesting perspective on technology and the impact on handwriting recently published on the CNN news website. Jan Olsen was interviewed and is quoted in the article.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/tech/web/impact-technology-handwriting/index.htmliref=allsearch

I work with many children with handwriting difficulties. Many parents feel that it is important for their children to communicate in writing even though society is moving toward a more technology driven format of communication. Any thoughts or comments on this article or handwriting education in general?