Handwriting

One of Kayla's weakest areas is fine motor skills - more specifically - handwriting. She has struggled even with the concept of tracing; her lines just would not follow the other lines.

She has the correct pencil grip, but I can see that her hands are just weak. She's had trouble with wrist rotation and stabilizing her arm to print.

Several months ago she just could not trace letters...it seemed as if she just couldn't make her hand do what she wanted it to do. Instead she seemed to want to color in the lines instead of tracing the lines. It was discouraging watching her trying to trace because it felt like she would just never get there.

Over the past few months she has made significant progress in this area. She is now able to trace with some accuracy and I'm amazed at the difference. I should have saved some of those earlier papers where she 'attempted' to trace so I could compare to where she is now.

But trust me when I say she could not do this just a few months ago. (This is her tracing over her name that I wrote, not her writing free hand by herself).


She can independently make an L, T (although after making the T she likes to turn it in to an I), and sometimes H, E, and F.

She obviously practices K a lot to prepare for writing her own name. Several weeks ago she was working on the little chalkboard and produced this - needless to say there was a lot of cheering going on.

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She is still a long way off from writing independently; and struggles to make her K on flat paper (instead of the boundaries the chalkboard provides) but she knows the basics of how it should look and makes the right amount of lines - it just comes out looking more like an F instead of a K.

I'm just happy to see the progress she's making and knowing she is finally tracing letters now...she'll get to writing eventually and there will be a big celebration when she does!