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Crayons - pencil grip preparation

Author: Petra Middag-Broks

Pediatric occupational therapist and mother

Is crayon or wax crayon no longer of this time? Yes, it is!

Writing instruction often leaves something to be desired. At many schools I visit, several students have a cramped pen grip and/or poorly legible handwriting. One of the causes is that children's fine motor skills were not yet ready to handle writing materials at the start of writing instruction. They then start writing with a primitive grip and have great difficulty unlearning this. Or they have difficulty precisely directing their movements.

crayon rocks
To prevent this, children should be given the opportunity to gain experience in drawing from various grips and to work towards refinement before they have to work very precisely in writing notebooks. Wax crayons can be a useful tool for this.
crayon triangle

By first drawing freely with different types of crayons on blank paper, the child is less focused on precision and can put more energy into gaining experience in adjusting the amount of force, speed and direction in the various grips.
Toys42hands has wax in different shapes. Each shape requires its own grip/grips and control.

crayonpearCollage

The crayons even allow for multiple grips.
By having several types of crayons at home or in the classroom, a child can experiment with grips or choose what he or she feels comfortable with. The teacher can see immediately whether a child is already good at the more refined grips.

Woody

A nice composition is, for example, a number of crayon pears, triangles, crayon rocks and Woody's supplemented with thinner crayons from the regular trade.

When a child is ready for letters, a letter can be written with wax crayons on blank paper (with or without structure) with eyes open and closed. Due to the roughness of the wax crayons on the paper, a child feels well in which direction he is going.