Pencil grip in 5yo

[MegBusset]

Just had parents' evening for DS1 (y1) and the teacher mentioned working on his pencil grip... at the moment he still kind of grasps it in his fist. His writing is fairly neat but according to the teacher he is likely to struggle when they start doing joined-up writing.

He is a very stubborn child who won't be told that he's doing it wrong, so any ideas how I can encourage him towards the "correct" grip? Or should I just leave him to hold it how he wants to?

Frustrating isn't it!
I am not a teacher, but also have a DS in Y1, and he had a similar problem in that he was not holding it between his fingers properly, and I could see that if this way continued his writing would always be very awkward. So I bought him one of those pens that has four different colour inks just to make it fun and a couple of A4 pads and started teaching him myself - little but often. He could get quite upset because it was difficult to change a 1.5 year habit, but I would write down simple words and get him to copy them underneath (also checking correct letter formation because that's very important as well), and just really encouraged him, bribed him and praised him and he is getting there now. It's horrible because you have to be quite firm about it, but in a very very kind encouraging way.

Have a look at www.stabilo.com/pages-uk/school-university/writing-beginners/
we bought the left handed grip one as as right handed parents we didn't know how to show LH DS how to hold a pen/pencil. They also do a right handed version
He now can hold any pen correctly but this one started him down the right path

Wonkylegs
I have just looked at your link. I have never seen these before - they look very good indeed and I'll definitely be getting one for my son. Many thanks :-)