You may have noticed in many photos on my blog that my daughter has struggled with pencil grip. I can’t tell you how proactive I have been about this, yet she still has the worst natural grip of all of my kids. She will hold the pencil with all 4 fingers on her grip along with her thumb. She writes neatly for her age, but I know her pencil grip needs correction. I tend to not push it all the time, which is why you often see the uncorrected version in school photos on my blog. We specifically spend time working on the correct grip, but she defies me and is stubborn. Because I want her to LOVE LEARNING, I choose not to fight it all during our school time.
Here’s a recent photo showing her uncorrected grip, which she prefers. It has her entire hand on the pencil!
Here’s a photo of the ONLY intervention we have tried that she has accepted. I seriously was ready to give up and then suddenly, she accepted the pom pom and even will remind me now. You can see the red pom pom in her hand. Her grip still isn’t picture perfect, but it is so much better!
I first saw this idea here, on Dr.Jean and Friends blog. You can read the explanation of how to present this correction there. I have tried everything but somehow I had never seen this before. I figured it was worth a shot. Thank goodness I tried it. She accepted it and likes her new little bucket of pom poms to choose from when we are working on grip.
We are continuing to work and using our pom pom to practice a lot. She will even use it during school time some now. Her natural grip hasn’t improved much so far, but we are trying! I pay attention to her when she isn’t thinking about it and noticed she still puts all fingers on the crayon/pencil.
I have more pencil grip articles and ideas pinned on my Preschool at Home Pinterest board. Scroll down, they are mostly about halfway down on the board right now.