Fine Motor Movement of Handwriting

Nan Jay Barchowsky: Hi! I am Nan Jay Barchowsky, Handwriting Specialist and I am here to help you with your writing.

We are going to try to understand that the movement that you want to achieve in order to have your handwriting becomes automatic. You have to concentrate on the letters when you are first working with them and trying to correct something that you think is wrong, but you really need to get relaxed about it as soon as you possibly can.

I want you to think about an athlete. Lets say its a soccer player and this is called gross motor movement, because the soccer player is playing with his whole body. His focus is very intend on getting a ball where he wants it. However, his entire body is relaxed is in a certain position, but it is relaxed.

Handwriting is a fine motor activity and for that think about somebody playing a piano. I dont think you could have imagine somebody playing a piano and not having the fingertips moving very rapidly, completely relaxed. The music is in the musicians head and it travels down to his hands and his fingers. So that all of the focus is in the message for handwriting, and what happens is that that message its in the brain is transferred down to the paper. Its all a very relaxed automatic kind of action. Maybe you need to train a little bit just as you have to train for being a musician.

As you are practicing, use music also while you are doing patterns like this chant. Chanting is very helpful to the movement, because you are saying down and you are controlling your movement by saying what you are doing. Get music that is close to your heartbeat and has a very definite downbeat.

Okay, now we are going to move on and talk about specific methods for handwriting.