6 Tricks To Help Homeschooling with Dysgraphia
Handwriting can be hard for many kiddos, and it can be a result of a number of causes. My 9 year old son find difficulty with hand writing due to dysgraphia, neurological condition that is characterized by poorly formed letters, poor spacing between letters and words, letter or number reversals, excessive cross-outs, and slow copying with illegible handwriting. As in our case, it can also cause problems with written expression and spelling.
As a mom of a child who lives with dysgraphia, I understand the struggle to get kids to push through handwriting practice and develop the skills needed to excel.
Warm Up Hand Exercises.
Exercising or "warming up" their hands, helps kids with sensory processing to prepare for a writing assignment. It also strengthens fine motor skills, needed to drip the pencil correctly.
We personally alternate between Play-Doh, Thera Putty, and Lego activities to improve dysgraphia and executive function skills. My son finds them fun, and less like a chore.
2. Try Different Paper and Writing Mediums.
Change their paper.
Spacing between individual letters, numbers, words, and sentences is difficult for those that experience dysgraphia. This can lead to frustration, avoidance of work, embarrassment, and cause kids to give up.
It helps my son, when we change the types of paper we use for writing, math, and narratives.
For example, using graph paper or turning lined paper side ways, helps to create a visual space or block for each letter, word, and sentence.
3. Upgrade Their Writing Tool
Another common feature of dysgraphia, is the inability to grip a pencil correctly. Some children need help with increased sensation of the pencil or pen. Some children tend to grip or write too hard.
Encouraging them to write with different instruments or adding a weighted grip to a pencil, may help them focus on their grip.
When my son was 3 and 4 years old, we had success using these colorful pencil weights . (Paid Link)
4. Teach Them to Type and Promote it.
Starting in 3rd grade, the writing assignment became more complex in content as well as length. While we continue to work on his handwriting, I also purchased a fun typing software and include typing into our curriculum.
I mean lets face it. Computers and technology are vital to society. Typing is a skill that everyone will need to have at some point in their lives.
Typing has helped us tremendously with writing lengthy narratives and paragraphs.
We have had great success with the Clevy Kids Mouse and Keyboard . (paid link)
5. Improve Gross Motor Skills Through Play.
Every morning, in addition to 15 minutes of fine motor skill warm ups, we also engage our gross motor skills.
Playing games helps to get our wiggles out, and provides proprioceptive input to help with focus and tasks. It also helps to strengthen his entire arm and core.
We enjoy making obstacle courses, crab walks, wheelbarrow races, and karate. Youtube has some excellent kid motivating karate exercises, if you need some pointers.
6. Use Busy Books and Journals
As like most kids, my son is a Minecraft fanatic. This being said, this summer and school year, I have created busy books and journals with themed prompts, pages, schedules, and checklists.
Adding a theme and making it personal triggers an internal drive to have fun and engage in the activity, as opposed to complete a boring writing task.
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