Handwriting & Pre-writing
Prewriting skills are foundational to handwriting success.
The development of pre-writing begins with scribbling on a page at 10-12 months. At 2 years a child begins to imitate vertical, horizontal and circular lines. At 3 years a child can copy lines accurately and between 4-5 years, they can copy a cross, diagonal lines, squares and possibly their name. By 5-6 years a child can print their name and copy most lowercase and uppercase letters of the alphabet.
Fine motor skills are also considered an important indicator for Prep readiness and play an important role in cognition and language development. Improving fine motor and visual motor skills are important to the preparation for learning to write. Fine motor skills are also important in developing handwriting skills (also known as graphomotor skills) which in turn are closely linked to early reading development.
Graphomotor skills are visual perceptual skills, orthographic coding, motor planning and execution, kinesthetic feedback and visual motor coordination.
For younger children, Skills for School focuses on developing pre-writing skills to support their handwriting readiness for entry to Prep.
Skills for School can support your child to be ready and confident for school entry.
Handwriting remains an essential classroom skill. Due to the complexity involved in handwriting, it can be very frustrating for many children.
Fluency and automaticity in handwriting legibility is important as well as handwriting speed for children to keep up with classroom work task demands as children get into the upper years at primary school.
Children who are able to generate handwriting automatically and with fluency have increased capacity to access their cognitive, language and attentional abilities.
Research shows that examiners assign lower marks to written work that is more illegible than similar quality of work which is more legible. Handwriting needs to be sufficiently legible to read and understand the content without effort which accurately reflects the child’s composition.
Children also need to be able to write sufficient quantities within the required timeframes to express their ideas and knowledge effectively.
Skills for School can support handwriting automaticity, legibility and speed.
