How can I help my child with his messy printing?

Question

-printing is very big and messy
-numbers also
-coloring is also very messy

Answer 1

Has he had his eyes examined . Sometimes children with visual impairments have trouble colouring within the lines and printing within the lines.

He needs to practice both on lined paper and on non lined paper. To help do a green line on the left hand side of the page and a red line at the right side, normally where margains would be. Tell him he has to stay within those lines when he prints. Perhpas get his teacher to cooperate in doing this as well.

When I was in school, eons ago , in Kindergarten and grade they made us use three lines when first learning to print and gradually we worked our way down to just one line.

There are books you can get to help him with his printing but the best way is for you to show him , with teacher's help, how to print all the letters. Even if he has no homework he'll spend 10 minutes each night working on his printing.

Same with colouring, sit down and colour with him showing him how to stay within the lines. You might have to go over the pictures with a darker marker to differentiate between the white, where you colour and the outline of the picture.

I'd also get him tested for add adhd. Hope that helps.

Answer 2

It depends on your child's age. Usually boys do have messier handwrighting than girls do. What helps in my school is constant practice. We start teaching handwriting by drawing lines first, both horizontal and vertical. Then we gradually increase to zig zags, spirals, and so on so that the children can get a feel of using a pencil and their motor skills become more intuned. Once that is done, we go on to teach lower case letters then upper case letters. We use specialty paper which can be found in staples. It consists of wide lines and a broken line in between. Using the wide line helps when the childs motor skills are not yet 100%. Our main goal is to have the child write within the lines. Once that is accoplished then we use repition so that the child can master the letters and would not be so messy. This helps with numbers as well.
Keep in mind, a child's handwriting should be big and messy if under the age of 7. After seven years, the handwriting should become smaller and less messy. Usually by the age of 11 is when many children master handwriting.
Hope this helps,
Chris,
Director of a Preschool in NYC

Answer 3

Children are generally unable to hold a pencil the correct way until they are at least 4 or 5. If this is the age range your child is in he may not have strong enough hand muscles to print or draw with a steady hand. It's important for children to develop these fine motor skills long before learning to write. Have him work with playdoh to strengthen the muscles, also games, toys or foods that are small and require the child to use eye-hand coordination can help as well. If we are talking about a 3-4 year old it's a little too soon to expect steady handwriting.

Answer 4

How old is he? It's fairly normal until seven or later (with boys) for handwriting to be messy. You're in the preschool section so I'm assuming he's under five?

Don't criticize, let him keep practicing. Write letters back and forth to him (yes, even if he can't read, he can look at shapes and 'learn' that mommy makes letters smaller, facing this way etc)

If you are really worried, look at a program like 'handwriting without tears', or 'Writing with diligence'. I have a child with special needs, and those programs were both helpful. They break it down and explain logically why certain letters have certain shapes, must be drawn in a certain order, etc.

Answer 5

First of all, the small muscles in the fingers may not be
developed all the way and this canbe a cause to some of
the problems you have listed. Second, ask the child's doctor or pediatrician what exercises are recommended to
improve and strengthen the small muscles of the fingers.
Using clay, finger painting, throwing a ball help develop the small muscles, these are just some examples. Third,does your child know where his body is in space?
For example, child closes eyes, ask child to stand on left foot, next have child touch right finger to left elbow etc.Fourth is your child left handed? Children that are left
handed have their own special way of holding a pencil or crayon!

Answer 6

You can help by getting messy too. Encouragement is what children need more than anything so negative comments will not help. Try saying "well done" every single time your child makes any mark on a piece of paper or puts a pen away in the box and watch his/her face light up. When kids get to around 6 you can expect things to start to get neater, with encouragement, but when they are starting it is far more important to get them to write and draw than what they actually write and draw.

Answer 7

Hi. If you are worried that your child's printing is a lot worse than that of other kids his age, you could have him evaluated by an occupational therapist. If he is 3y.o. or older, you could have this done through your school district.

Some fun activities that target fine motor skills would be to use a spirograph, 'search' for coins in a large ball of silly puddy or to color on an easel. The two coloring activities are good because you can't rest your hand on the table while doing them, and they are also fun! I used to draw mazes for my child and decorate them with 'monster' stickers. He would then have to draw his way through the maze w/o gettting "eaten" by the monsters. Good luck.

Answer 8

Your son is probably tired of doing writing exercises over and over to improve printing. Instead of doing writing-related activities to solve the problem, try a different approach. Let him play on a piano or open up Word and let him type some things, anything. His little finger muscles just need some exercise. Also try to do some finger-plays like "Little Bunny Phoo-phoo" or "Itsy Bitsy Spider" with him. If you don't know these, ask his teacher to work with him and you on that. These things will help his hand-eye coordination.

Answer 9

How old is the child? It comes with practice and with age. My 5 year old writes very well and colors like crap. He can color nice, but won't take the time. On the other hand, my 7 y.o. can write and color well, but won't because he's lazy.
The younger the child, the less fine motor skills they have. So writing and coloring is more difficult the younger they are. Some of it takes time to grow out of, some of it is simply practice, and the rest is just patience on your part.

Answer 10

try making a dot to dot with the kids name. that is how we taught my son how to write his name. my son is 4 1/2 and he only uses one color when he colors. Progress reports come out at the end of the month and I an curious to see what his teacher thinks of that.