Relying on the gross and large body movements (gross motor skills) they have acquired, children develop smaller, more refined movements (fine motor skills). These skills must be nurtured and encouraged by material and specific assignments to become automatic: e.g. with modelling clay, toy building blocks, plug-in toy building blocks, puzzles, bead stringing, ribbon tying and the like. This variety of different, well-trained combinations of movements will finally give rise to graphomotor skills. The lines drawn by children during their first years of life become more and more refined and form the basis for children’s ability to write. During this phase, children already deliberately start practising various characters while increasingly monitoring and controlling the shape of the characters drawn (graphomotor skills).
The more incentives children are given to engage in basic drawing activities, the easier it may be for them to master the task of learning to write. For this reason, children experiencing handwriting problems due to poor motor skills must be given incentives for practising their gross and fine motor skills. Exercises encouraging children to practise wavy lines with sweeping pencil movements are the best way to prepare your children for pre-school and their first year of school. Only paying attention to correct letter shapes and spelling would not be conducive. Simply let them practise movements with their own hands by tracing lines/shapes in the air, on another child’s back, on the table or on the floor with their feet – with eyes open and closed.