

10 Tips for How to Correct a Poor Pencil Grip The pincer grasp is the foundation for holding a pencil correctly. To build up to the tripod grasp, it is important for your child or student to first work on the “pincer grasp.” This term refers to holding a small object between the pointer finger and thumb. The shaft of the pencil sits in the space between the thumb and the pointer finger. The thumb and index finger pinch the pencil, which rests on the middle finger. Now, at the beginning of the school year, I include this picture in my Curriculum Night presentation.Ī correct pencil grip looks like this.

This taught me that I should never assume my students’ parents know what a correct grip looks like. I wrote on one paper, “Please work on pencil grip at home.” The mom emailed me saying that she didn’t know what was wrong with the way her daughter was holding the pencil. What Does a Correct Pencil Grip Look Like?Ī few years back, I had a student who wrapped her middle finger around the front of the pencil. In addition to working on fine motor skills, we also want to incorporate activities that build shoulder strength. The muscles of the shoulder and arms are involved in the act of grasping a pencil and writing. Another cause of a poor pencil grip that some might find surprising is weak shoulder muscles. Increasing fine motor play opportunities will help to build the intrinsic muscles of the hand, and it should improve hand coordination as well. You will see kids try to hold the pencil any way they can in order to stabilize it. When the finger muscles are underdeveloped, it leads to a lack of coordination.

Fine motor weakness, in particular weak finger muscles, often results in an awkward grip.

Let’s begin by discussing what causes a poor pencil grip. In this post, I will share 10 tips for correcting poor pencil grips that will set kids up for writing success! What Causes a Poor Pencil Grip? From fisting pencils to wrapping the third finger, I have seen it all when it comes to incorrect pencil grips. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.How to Correct a Poor Pencil Grip: 10 Tips to HelpĪs a kindergarten teacher, one of the things I see kids struggle with the most is holding a pencil properly. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
