You might be wondering if your child is holding their pencil correctly and whether there are things you can do to help him or her develop the correct pencil grip.
First of all, it’s important to realise that pencil grip is like many of the skills your child will develop during their first years of life – it’s something that develops over time and at your individual child’s own pace!
This guide (A Guide to Pencil Grip Development) contains a really useful overview of pencil grip development and describes the different grips you might see between the ages of 1 years and 7 years.
And this video outlines the same information:
https://youtu.be/DYXB2B0IfDM
Depending on your child’s stage of pencil grip development, there are lots of fun, play-based activities you can encourage him/her to have a go at to build up the strength in their muscles. Click here for some of these ideas.
Once your child is beginning to develop a tripod pencil grip, you can encourage him or her to ‘pick and flick’ to support a comfortable grip for writing. This video explains how to pick up and hold a pencil using the ‘pick and flick’ technique.
This technique is also sometimes called ‘nip, flip, grip’ and these printable posters demonstrate it in three steps:
Finally, you might find this explanation of a Good Pencil Grip useful – if your child is holding their pencil like this by the time they go into Reception, their Reception teachers will be very impressed!