A question we at Little TheraPeas are often asked is if handwriting is still something, we should care about our kids doing?
The answer: yes. Handwriting is a very important skill to help children with developing their reading and spelling skills, memory, attention/concentration and importantly their fine motor skills. Did you know handwriting activated the brain more than using a keyboard does purely due to the motor skill and cognition required to do it?
What happens if you have you got a little pea who hates handwriting? Well Little TheraPeas has a helpful idea for you. The key is finding something that is meaningful and helps make it fun for your little one.
Our top pick: SILLY SENTENCES.
We play silly sentences by writing down a whole bunch of starting words/names (e.g. ‘Rebecca’, ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’, etc), middle actions (e.g. ‘jumped on’, ‘laughed at’, ‘sang to’, etc) and ending words/names (e.g ‘the fridge’, ‘the toilet’, etc). Be creative and come up with really silly, wacky and out there words that your child will be not just interested in but find funny!
Each word is then cut up individually and placed in the piles of starting, middle and ending words. Then ask the child to pick one from each pile – these will all go together to make a silly sentence. The child then has to write the silly sentence – some even get creative and come up with their own to write. At our clinic nothing is off limits (well only if it is rude) for sentences as this helps to motivate the child!
Over the years we have found that not matter the age kids visiting our clinic love silly sentences and often request is specifically, even those that initially hated writing! We want to know if your little pea does too!!
Tell us how you went and what silly sentences you came up with.
