Autonomous/fun handwriting exercises

[Claennister]

My daughter is not ready for alternative home ed because she loves a class full of kids to play with, but it's not serving her educational needs. I don't want to set her up with a tutor-style after school experience, school and homework and all is quite enough, but she does not some improvement in her pencil manipulation skills. She's P1 (reception) stage and a very reluctant writer. She will happily "draw" for hours but it's always scribble, she'd rather turn out 150 scribbles than one nice drawing.

I'm hoping to find activities which she will get pleasure from which will also improve her manipulation skills, perhaps a game of operation, threading, all that kind of thing. The main skill to work with is she hasn't managed to work out that you just move your fingers and hand to write, she uses her whole arm so it's very hard for her to control with her hand floating in the air and working from her shoulder - any ideas for fun games which encourage her to use her fingers and anchor the hand? I don't want to sit her down with worksheets, I want to get her ready for home ed should the day come that she's happy to drop school.

Thx.

[Claennister]

Sorry, no idea why I wrote "she does not some improvement" I meant "need"

[NotJustKangaskhan]

On this thread, mrz gives a long list of fun activities and tips that help fine motor skills.

Proper writing, that doesn't leave your hand aching, actually does use the whole arm so your daughter isn't going wrong there. This site gives a great explanation of the muscles needed for writing and exercises to get down to proper penmanship. You can also google writing readiness for other exercises - my 4 year (who does drawing much like yours) currently loves doing loops - draw a good sized circle on a piece of paper and have her do 'loops' (like a cursive e or l) all around the outside of the circle, facing out, to give it curly hair.