Reception Writing Workshop

Thank you to all of those parents/carers who were able to make our writing workshop yesterday. We hope it provided you with some useful as well as practical ideas on how best you can help support your child with their learning at home. The children all loved working with you, demonstrating their writing skills yesterday and proudly showed their peers what they had written when they returned back to class.

As a little reminder here is a picture demonstrating how to hold a pencil correctly:

 

If your child is left-handed, here are some handy tips to help:

• Position the paper correctly. Left-handed children should sit with their paper slightly to the left of centre, and angled downwards. This makes it easier for your child to see the nib of the pencil as they're writing.
• Hold the pencil in the right place. Your child should pinch the shaft of the pencil, not the sharpened nib (but not too high - about 1.5cm from the tip) - again, this helps to prevent the hand from obscuring what your child is writing.
• Use the right hand for stability. By placing their right hand flat on the right-hand side of the paper, your child can prevent the page from shifting about as they write.
• Keep the wrist below the line. Left-handers often develop a hooked wrist position, where the wrist curls over the top of the pencil, so that they can see what they're writing - but this can make writing uncomfortable. Encourage your child to keep the pencil on the line, with the wrist below, to improve their vision, reduce arm strain and prevent smudging.
• Put a dot at the start of the line. When they're learning to write, left-handed children often naturally write from right to left. Putting a mark at the left-hand side of the line can remind them where to start writing.

Later in the spring term we will be running another workshop where our focus will be on Maths, please look out for further details on our blog.