Summer is here, school is over and the children have a lot of free time. They have the right to enjoy the sun and their rest but we can also help them to start writing with graphomotor exercises. Especially for those children who have a worse handwriting or who are starting to read and write.
What is graphomotor skills?
Graphomotricity is related to the development of fine motor or fine motor skills. It is the ability to control the movements of the body, especially of the hands, wrist and fingers. To learn to write you have to master the body and its movements. This development begins long before children begin to write.
With small exercises you can practice, correct and stimulate fine motor functions, so that children learn how to move the hand to be able to write correctly.
At first, children draw without shapes, only with curves and lines since their fine motor is not yet developed. In addition, they do not have the spatial sense and they usually make drawings that come out of the sheet. Graphomotricity teaches hand-eye coordination, proper movement (up-down, right-left) and understanding of spatiality.
Graphomotor exercises to improve writing in children
As we have seen before, their development begins before they start writing, which is usually after 3 years. That is why we can start earlier with small exercises to stimulate your fine motor. We leave you a series of exercise guide to develop your mastery with the various parts of your fine motor.
Graphomotor exercises for hands
- Clapping, first freely, then following a certain rhythm as a song that you like and changing the rhythm.
- Carry one or more objects in balance in the palm of the hand during a stroke, first in one hand and then in the other, twice in each hand.
- Doing free strokes with your finger on the sand and / or on the water.
- Perform different hand gestures accompanying children's songs. You can invent dances that I can learn.
- Turn hands, first with clenched fists, then with outstretched fingers.
- Move both hands simultaneously in various directions (up, down, circular motion, etc.)
- Imitate animal movements with your hands (lion moving its claws, bird flying, etc.) or objects (windmill blades, helicopter propellers ...)
- Open one hand while closing the other, first slowly and then faster.
Exercises to develop finger dexterity
- Open and close the fingers of the hand, first simultaneously and then alternating them. Then we will gradually increase the speed.
- Join and separate the fingers of the hand, first freely, then following orders.
- Join each finger with the thumb of the corresponding hand, increasing speed.
- Pretend they are playing a musical instrument: guitar, drums, piano, drum ...
- With your hand closed, stick fingers one after the other, starting with the little finger. Then save them one by one as well.
- With both hands on the table lift your fingers one after the other, starting with the pinkies.
Exercises to develop hand-eye coordination:
- Throwing objects, both with one hand and the other, trying to hit the target (box, trash can, cans, bowling pins, target, etc.)
- Screw and unscrew caps, cans, nuts ...
- Thread a string on perforated balls.
- Fasten and unfasten buttons.
- Bind and untie ties.
- Fit and disengage objects.
- Handle small objects (lentils, buttons, chickpeas ...).
- Model with clay.
- Pass the sheets of a book.
- Shuffle, deal letters...
- Punching, punching patterns, etc.
- Rip and trim with your fingers.
- Fold paper and tear at the doubles.
- Cut out with scissors.
Exercises to develop straight and curved lines
Once the child has dexterity in their hands and fingers, and hand-eye coordination, the development of strokes can begin.
- Start with straight and curved lines, and then make waves, loops, circles. Something simple.
- Walk through the dots. These exercises improve traceability.
- Fill in spaces and figures.
- Copy different drawings: squares, straight ...
- Exit the maze by drawing a line.
Why remember ... graphing is the basis of literacy.
Thank you very much, very useful