Then their muscles will be all warmed up and ready for handwriting. Once your kids get the hang of these activities it should only take you 5-10 minutes at the most to complete them all. Make sure you are only using your writing hand for this one, do not help out with the opposite hand. Then back down to the bottom of the pencil. Move your fingers along the pencil from tip to tip, starting at the bottom and working towards the top. Make sure your child is holding the pencil with an appropriate grasp like the tripod or quadruped grasp. This combines some shoulder and finger exercises together. Get your pencils out and start to twirl them in the air like a baton, spinning them both horizontally and vertically in the air. “How slowly can you play the piano?” “How fast can you play the piano?” “Can you use both hands together to play the piano?” (works on bilateral coordination skills). Place the tips of your fingers together and straighten the fingers while pushing the finger tips against each other.ĭrum your fingers on the table or desk as if playing the piano. This provides proprioceptive and tactile feedback and prepares the muscles for movement. Pull on your “gloves” by applying firm pressure to the fingers and back of the each hand. Now that the shoulders and neck are loosened and ready for writing, let’s move on to the hand and fingers! Finger Warm Up Activities for Handwriting Using the shoulders to move, make small circles with the hands, moving from left to right (remember to do this movement from the shoulders, not the fingers or hand). Like your thumbs together to make an “X” and turn your hands facing out. You can also use this to practice crossing midline by crossing the hands and arms while doing the movement.īegin with your arms straightened in front of your body. Then straighten your elbows, moving one arm out from the body and the other arm to the side of your body. Start with your elbows bent and your hands in a fist in front of each shoulder. Take turns having the left and right arm above each other for this activity. Then snap your hands together like a crocodile snapping its jaw. Raise your arms in the air with one above the other. For front to back it will feel like you are trying to push your scapula together in the back, much like a shoulder bench press when working out. To describe this to your child you can tell them to lift their shoulders to touch their ears and then push them back down. Shrug your shoulders up and down and then front to back. Shoulder warm up activities prepare the arms for writing and may help to release tension in the neck and shoulder. Bend your elbows to bring your nose towards the triangle in your fingers, then push up with the arms to straighten your elbows. The feet should should up slightly from the floor.ĭesk Push-Ups: Start with your hands flat on the top of the desk with the tips of the thumbs and index finger facing each other to create a triangle. Using the arm muscles, push up from the bottom of the chair. Shoulder Warm-Up Activities for HandwritingĬhair Push-Ups: Begin this by sitting straight in your chair and gripping the sides of the chair, thumbs facing towards the fingers and pressing against the underside of the chair. In the case of handwriting, the finger muscles are the ones you are primarily focusing on, but you want to start with the shoulder and arm muscles first for warm ups. In therapy terms this is called distal (muscles farthest away from the ones you are focusing on) and proximal (muscles directly next to or close by the ones you are working on). I usually start warm up activities starting with the large muscles first and then working down to the smaller muscles.
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