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10 Handy Helpers for Kindergarten Readiness

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cartoon girl public domain pictures pixabay

10 Handy Helpers for Kindergarten Readiness

by Katherine J. Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L

 

Kindergarten has become the new first grade.  Yes, I am from the “old school” where free play, guided activities, and milk and cookies gave Kindergarten it’s role and purpose.  I know they included nap time in there, as well, but I was never a napper.  So, I spent that quiet time day dreaming and cooking up story ideas in my head!  Kindergarten was a place to dream, grow, and get to know all about yourself.  But all that has been designated as preschool activities and Kindergarteners are expected to have certain skills at the “ready” when they come to school.  So, let’s take a look at some Kindergarten Readiness Skills, shall we?

 

 

First Some Research

  • A 2004 study conducted by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, (2) looked at the factors and components that account for differences in children’s skills and performance in Kindergarten.  They found that “the cognitive and social skills with which young children enter kindergarten make a difference in their achievement in kindergarten.”  Findings indicated that a child’s family experiences and interactions “strongly correlated with their relative skills and abilities upon entry to kindergarten.”
  • The authors of a 2002 National Center for Early Learning and Development study (1) found that “school readiness is not defined as a trait of a child but rather as a product of interactions in terms of the settings in which the child participates.”  Family, social, and educational environments prior to Kindergarten provide youngsters with opportunities to learn behaviors, language and communication skills, and problem solving strategies.
  • A 2000 longitudinal study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, (3) determined that “the foundation of cognitive skills and knowledge that children build in kindergarten will influence children’s experience in school and their cognitive growth in later school years.”

 

I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve selected 3 studies that are not current.  I’ve done that to emphasize that Kindergarten readiness has been known to be an important factor in a child’s educational success for some time.  Even us stick-in-the-muds have to admit that!  There is a great deal of effort in the communities to get children, their parents, and the schools together early to foster the development of children’s skills during the critical first 5 years.  Knowledge is the most important tool we can give parents in their quest for educational success for their children.  And it all needs to start before they enter the door to their Kindergarten classroom.puzzle family cartoon geralt pixabay-210786_1280

 

What are Kindergarten Readiness Skills?

Children who come to Kindergarten are expected to have a wide range of skills that will help them to learn and grown in school.

  • Enthusiasm toward learning.   A child should be excited about exploring new activities, comfortable with asking questions, and diligent enough to persevere with challenging tasks.
  • Language skills.  He should be able to communicate his needs and express his feelings in an appropriate manner.  He should have an accurate sense of body awareness with an understanding of directional terms such as around, under, over, and through.
  • Ability to listen.  A child should be able to follow simple instructions and listen to an entire story without interrupting.
  • Desire to be independent.  She should be able to separate from her parents for the length of the school day, be able to use the bathroom by herself, and be starting to take responsibility for her personal belongings.
  • Ability to interact with children and adults.  A child should be able to follow a simple two-step task and independently problem solve.  He should be willing to share, compromise, and take turns with his classmates and teachers.  It helps if he remembers to say “please, thank you, and excuse me,” as well!
  • Strong fine-motor skills.  A child should be able to hold and use a pencil, cut with scissors, and be learning to write her name.  It is important that she be able to carefully turn the pages of a book, pack and unpack her backpack, and fasten snaps and buttons on her clothing.  (Zippers are nice but not an essential just yet!)
  • Basic letter and number awareness.  A child should be able to sing and recite the alphabet and to recognize some letters   He should be able to count to 10 and identify numbers one to five.  Teachers would also like him to be able to recognize his name printed in in upper and lower case letters (James).  It is also helpful if he knows the basic colors and shapes.

 

Despite my stick-in-the-mud viewpoint, I have come up with 10 Handy Helpers for Kindergarten Readiness!  These are the very skills that eventually, when the time is right, will help children to master their handwriting skills!  So, let’s go and discover just what they are, shall we?

 

10 Handy Helpers That You Can Do At Home!

Have fun with learning by having your children include these activities in your daily routines:

1.  Count the number of steps from the bedroom to the bathroom, to the bath to the kitchen, and from the door to the mailbox. (visual-motor and visual perceptual skills)

2.  Shout out directional terms as he sets the table (left for the fork, right for the knife and spoon) or when you go for a walk (up for the sky, down for the sidewalk, and over for the bridge).  (body and spatial awareness)

3.  Find book titles in the library that begin with each letter of the alphabet in order.  (sequencing, visual memory, letter recognition)

4.  Sort and match the laundry when it’s dry and deliver it to the owners.  (visual discrimination)  Use clothespins to dry them outside on the line! (fine-motor)

peas and carrots condesign pixabay5.  Cut out pictures of grocery items from the newspaper and locate them in the store.  (visual discrimination, visual scanning, visual recognition)

6.  Draw a picture of something he did that day and verbally describe it.  (language, fine motor, visualization)

7.  Count out small snacks as she puts them into a bowl.  (fine motor, sequencing, visual-motor)

8.  Prepare a simple recipe by measuring, pouring, mixing, and stirring the ingredients.  (fine motor, visual-motor, sequencing, following directions)

9.  Dictate a letter for you to write for him to grandmother, sister, or friend.  (visualization, language)

10. Unpack the groceries and help to put them away.  (visual scanning, fine- and gross-motor, visual discrimination)

 

Of course, there’s always puzzles, board games, books, and crafts to help your child get ready for school!  So much fun, so little time!

 

As always, thanks for reading!  I hope you will honor me with your comments, feedback, and suggestions for more ways to include Kindergarten readiness in a child’s daily routine!

Katherine

 

Katherine J. Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/LKatherine J. Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L, is a pediatric occupational therapist who specializes in the assessment and remediation of handwriting skills and understands the link between handwriting skills and writing.  She can be contacted via her website, Handwriting With Katherine.
 
 Disclaimer: The information shared on the Handwriting With Katherine website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter page, Pinterest page; on any guest blog posts or any other social media is for general informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for sound professional medical advice or evaluation and care from your physician/medical team or any other qualified health care providers. Therefore, the authors of these links/posts take no responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk taken by individuals as a result of applying the ideas or resources.

 

 

(1) Pianta, R. C., & Cox, M. (2002).  Early Childhood Research and Policy Briefs; Transition to Kindergarten.  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:  National Center for Early Development & Learning.

(2)  Boethel, M. (2004).  Readiness: School, Family, and Community.  Southwest Educational Development Laboratory
(3)  U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics.  America’s Kindergarteners, NCES 2000-070, by Kristin Denton, Elvira Germino-Hausken. Project Officer, Jerry West, Washington, DC: 2000.

Modern Handwriting or Hieroglyphics? Are they simply DRAWING? (Part 2)

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"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." (Art Walker Charter Academy)

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” (Art Walker Charter Academy)

 

“Drawing keeps the eye fresh, the mind alive, and the intuition nimble.” 

             Timothy Nero 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome back for Part 2 in our discussion about handwriting, our eyes and our hands, and drawing.  We left our last meeting with some food for thought:

If the seed for our personal handwriting style… our creative interpretations for the message that we want to convey…remains in our scribbling memories,  wouldn’t a bit of drawing practice help a struggling child find his way naturally toward handwriting success?

That’s what we are here to discover today!

 

A Common Ground

Art, handwriting, and creative writing are all forms of communication for us.  They share a common ground for “getting our message across.”  But children begin to try their hand at communicating from the day they are born. 

  • Trevor Cairney, in his informative blog, “When do children start writing?“,  tells us that early on “babies begin to respond to their world and that many of their early vocalizations, eye movements, gazes, facial movements and body movements are attempts to communicate.”  He goes on to discuss the importance of a child “making his mark” and his desire to tell us what those squiggly lines “mean.”  They are the beginnings of a child’s desire to use handwriting to
    Babies use their "early vocalizations, eye movements, gazes, facial movements and body movements as attempts to communicate" (Trevor Cairney)

    Babies use their “early vocalizations, eye movements, gazes, facial movements and body movements as attempts to communicate” (Trevor Cairney)

    communicate with us. 

 

  • Yes, we all have the desire to put our ideas into some form of communication.  In my “Life is A Series of Baby Steps” blog on the Child Development Club website, I ask that you “Give Them The Space and They Will Create!”  Providing space for art allows children to”talk to you” with an arrangement of colors, shapes, and elements that are a language in and of themselves! 

 

Scribbling is to writing what babbling is to speaking:  an early stage of children’s development that should be encouraged.” 

She emphasizes that the development of hand and finger strength brings scribbling into the realm of producing “circles, ovals, squares and crosses….”  Handwriting skills are developed long before a child even begins to think of the alphabet.  They are experimented with and honed during the most exciting part of learning – play!  Play without pressure.  Play for the sake of play.   

 

“We encourage scribbling by providing a place and materials, by acknowledging the work, and by discussing the work in a nonjudgmental way.” 

But, you may be asking, how can all of this “freedom” turn into efficient handwriting skills?  Well, let’s take a look!

 

Handwriting is an Art Form

Drawing is “a method for creating intelligible order.  It is a universal language, and a natural one.”  ….. Dr. Susan Rich Sheridan

 

abstract art kids activity blog

“Serious play with abstraction need not be withheld at a certain time or grade.” (Dr. Susan Rich Sheridan)

Dr. Sheridan is an artist, writer, parent, and teacher who utilizes drawing to build writing skills in her students with her “Drawing/Writing” program.    For struggling students, drawing allows them to get over the “hump.”  Just as children use drawings to develop their language skills, drawing activities can help students to go back to the basics to repair and enhance their handwriting skills.  Dr. Sheridan tells us that “children are born ready for symbol systems.  Every representation children construct in their brains is an abstraction.  Serious play with abstraction need not be withheld at a certain time or grade.”  

 

And I say, aren’t the manuscript and cursive letters of the alphabet simply abstractions?  Symbols created to depict what we see in our “mind’s eye” in order to translate a picture symbol that we would immediately recognize into a language that society has deemed conventional.  Again, I suggest, wouldn’t drawing be the perfect medium for handwriting instruction and remediation?

 

 Art is there for the taking!

Efficient handwriting requires some very complex skills that can be developed in some very simple ways.  Children seem to know what they need to do to sharpen these skills when they are given the freedom to experiment.  You don’t have to look far to find those simple ways to hone handwriting skills.  I am honored to share with you some of the excellent artistic/handwriting skill development ideas from two of my favorite sources!   Just to help out a little, I’ve linked Vanessa Levin’s ideas with the handwriting skills that Lisa Marnell will define for us to guide you toward the “freedom for learning” that will link art and the development of efficient handwriting skills.  Have fun exploring!

1.     Visual Motor Skills

  • defined as “using vision to guide written output” 
  • the ability to reproduce shapes, letters, and numbers 
  • to connect lines, to start and stop at the correct spot, and to edit for accuracy 

Vanessa offers sandpaper alphabet rubbings to encourage visual motor skills with a touch of sensory input and alphabet stamps and pieces for creating pictures while they sort and identify the letters. 

I love to use worksheets that provide budding artists with the chance to use their letters and art to connect the symbol with the letter formations.  A wonderful way to connect the “visual” with the “motor!”  You can even make your own worksheets at Enchanted Learning!

2.    Visual Perception Skills

  • defined as “a child’s ability to use visual information to make meaning of what he sees” 
  • the ability to cognitively “call up” letter formations and produce them automatically in writing
  • to retain information in short-term memory until it is on the paper, allowing for fast and fluid handwriting
  • to recognize the differences between letters (e.g., b and d)
  • to remember the proper placement of letters within words (for spelling) 

Vanessa provides plenty of opportunities for experimenting with visual processing skills.  Her cutting center and alphabet pieces work well for vision scanning and tracking as they create pictures and crafts. 

 

I enjoy Childhood Beckons’ “Storytelling With Illustrations” activity that asks children to visualize their story and produce it on the chalkboard.

3.    Fine Motor Skills 

  •  defined as complex
  •  the ability to use the hands adequately in order to write fluently and effortlessly

Vanessa provides plenty of opportunities for children to be creative using their hands with cutting, gluing, stamping, and even stapling, complimenting these with Wikki Stix, lacing, and and even fishing activities!

 In lieu of issuing pencil grips, I like to see a child work on developing these skills.

4.    Trunk Control Skills

  • defined as “strong and steady trunk muscles to provide the base of support needed for delicate fine motor tasks like writing”
  • the ability to work without fatigue sitting at a desk or running around the playground 

Vanessa’s Writing Center appears to be a “free-form” area where students are encouraged to work standing, walking around the room, or even on the floor.  Drawing, coloring, cutting, or pasting can be done during “big-kid tummy time.”  They are working on trunk control as they support themselves on their elbows and maintain their head and neck position in order to see their creations! 

I like to hide the pieces of our craft project in various corners of the room, presenting the work as a “ground-floor project” where we all crawl to find them and complete the work on our tummies!   It’s fun.  Try it!

5.    Shoulder Stability

  • defined as “the muscles around the shoulder working together to hold this joint stable”
  • the ability to use “very slow, well controlled shoulder movements” for efficient pencil control
  • to write fluidly and legibly without fatigue

Vanessa works on shoulder strengthening with clipboards to write and draw on and stabilize as they walk around the room or during tummy time! 

I am especially partial to having children draw on the board or any vertical surface to encourage the development of their shoulder muscles and joints.  Children always enjoy being the teacher!

 

 

Some Final Notes

Lacing is a fun handwriting warm-up!

Lacing is a fun handwriting warm-up!

  • The developmental stages that lead to handwriting mastery begin in infancy and continue to develop through elementary school. 
  • Learning how to grip a pencil appropriately depends upon the development of the hand, vision, and the brain. 
  • These connections provide the foundation – and they can be developed through play! 

 

 

 

Please be sure to connect with Vanessa and Lisa, as well as the other excellent sites offered here, and let them know how much we appreciate their awesome “shares!”

 

In Part 3 of our “Modern Handwriting or Hieroglyphics” series, we will discover the artistic ventures that can help our older strugglers with their handwriting mastery!  I hope you will join me and share your thoughts!

 

Is writing just "too much" for the hand?"

Modern Handwriting or Hieroglyphics – Part 1

 

Be sure to check out Part 1 in our series!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katherine Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L

Katherine Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L

Katherine J. Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L, is a pediatric occupational therapist who specializes in the assessment and remediation of handwriting skills and understands the link between handwriting skills and writing.  She can be contacted via her website, Handwriting With Katherine.

 
 
 
 
Disclaimer: The information shared on the Handwriting With Katherine website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter page, Pinterest page; on any guest blog posts or any other social media is for general informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for sound professional medical advice or evaluation and care from your physician/medical team or any other qualified health care providers. Therefore, the authors of these links/posts take no responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk taken by individuals as a result of applying the ideas or resources.

Visual Perceptual Skills: The Keys to Learning – Part 3

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Visual Perceptual Skills: The Keys to Learning, Part 3, Handwriting With Katherine        In our previous articles, we discussed the first four skills in the Visual Perceptual Skill Set:

·      Visual Attention
·      Visual Discrimination
·      Position in Space
·      Visual Spatial Relations
·      Visual Memory
·      Visual Sequential Memory
·      Visual Form Constancy
·      Visual Closure
·      Figure Ground

 

 

It was apparent that these skills set the stage for our ability to pay attention to our tasks, as well as to understand what our bodies can do and how we can manipulate them through space.

 

We will continue on our journey of discovery by taking a look at the next two visual perceptual skills:

Visual Memory and Visual Sequential Memory.

 

5.  Visual Memory is our ability to recall and store visual details in our short-term memory for use during automatic tasks such as handwriting, reading, and math.  It allows us to recognize the differences between the shapes and sizes of letters, to remember sight words, and to comprehend what we have read.  Visual memory is often described as a process by which we see an object in our “mind’s eye” and then retrieve a memory of that object in order to mentally identify it.

 

a.  Children who have difficulty with visual memory will often exhibit these signs:

(1)  Difficulty keeping up with his peers during handwriting tasks, needing to frequently “think about” the formation of the letters that form a word.

Visual Perceptual Skills: The Keys to Learning, Part 3, Handwriting With Katherine

Sometimes children will appear bored when they are struggling with poor memory skills.

(2)  Difficulty copying from the board or a book, frequently losing his place and stopping to find the location of the last word he has written.

(3)  Demonstrates diminished comprehension after reading an age-appropriate story.

(4)  Difficulty following verbal directions that include over two-steps, usually only performing the last step that was provided to him.

(5) Demonstrates boredom and/or confusion during class or home work, tending to act as thought he was not interested in the task.

 

b. Activities that enhance visual memory include:

(1) Memory games, either board games or on-the-spot activities, provide “exercise” for the brain’s short-term memory.  Memory games can be constructed with everyday household items, such as feeding utensils, family photos, or crayons. Have the child look at them, name them verbally, and write them down, if he can.  If he is a beginning writer, have him draw a simple picture of each to enhance his memory.  Then, hide the items under a cloth and ask him to list them without using his vision.

(2) Copying pattern designs provides opportunities for children to use their visual short-term memory as they remember the colors or shapes that comprise the design.  Manipulatives, such as beads or blocks, enhance the development of visual memory by adding visual-motor input.

(3) Ask questions frequently that require the use of short-term memory, such as “What equipment did you use on the playground today?”  It also helps to reinforce any written directions with verbal ones, asking the child to repeat them to you to ensure that he has understood and remembered them.

 

6. Visual Sequential Memory is our ability to remember a series of numbers, letters, or objects that have been presented visually and to recall that sequence accurately.   We use this skill every day as we recall phone numbers or spell words such as “their” and “there.”

Sequential Memory I can teach my child

Story Sequencing is a fun way to enhance visual sequencing memory skills!

a. Children who have difficulty with visual sequential memory will often exhibit these signs:

(1) Difficulty remembering the alphabet or numbers in sequence.

(2) Difficulty sequencing letters in familiar words or numbers in a math problem.

(3) Difficulty copying from the board or a book without frequent errors.

(4) Difficulty recalling the sequence of events in a story or a familiar activity.

(5) Difficulty performing math problems.

 

 

 

b. Activities that enhance visual sequential memory include:

(1) Word search puzzles require a child to remember the sequence of letters that comprise the spelling of the word that he is locating on the page.

(2)  Board games that use numbers, letters, or words, such as bingo, provide opportunities to recall the shapes of letters and sequence of numbers or words.

(3) Movement games, such as Duck-Duck-Goose or Red Light-Green Light, require the child to remember the sequence of activities that comprise the rules of the game, as well as provide motor movement to enhance the development of memory skills.

 

 

Once again, it is clear to “see” that our vision skills are key facets in learning and literacy.

 

In the words of vision experts, 80% of what you perceive, comprehend and remember depends on the efficiency of the visual system.  And that makes vision an important detail to never overlook!

 

Please join us for the final segment in our journey of discovery as we unwrap the secrets of the Visual Form Constancy, Visual Closure, and Figure Ground skills!  Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Did you miss Parts 1 and 2?  You can get them here!

 

Part 1: The Cotton Ball Game is an excellent "attention-getter!"

Part 1: The Cotton Ball Game is an excellent “attention-getter!”

Visual Perceptual Skills: The Keys to Learning, Part 2, Handwriting With Katherine

Part 2: Problems with balance can sometimes signal poor body awareness skills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katherine J. Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L, is a pediatric occupational therapist who owns and operates a clinic that specializes in the assessment and remediation of handwriting skills.  She can be contacted via her website, Handwriting With Katherine.

 

 

Disclaimer: The information shared on the Handwriting With Katherine website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter page, Pinterest page; the Wellness For Life:  Cape Cod blog; or any other social media is for general informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for sound professional medical advice or evaluation and care from your physician/medical team or any other qualified health care providers. Therefore, the authors of these links/posts take no responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk taken by individuals as a result of applying the ideas or resources.

What Do Handwriting and Optical Illusions Have in Common?

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sciencebob
   Image Credit:  Science Bob

(previously published November 2013)

Optical illusions fascinate us with the tricks they play on our visual system.  Combinations of angles, contrasts, and geometrical shapes have the power to confuse our brain into thinking that stationary objects are moving and that flat images have 3-D qualities.  The information received through our eyes competes with the data we have stored in our brains in an attempt to make “sense” of what we are viewing.    The past struggles with the present in order to assimilate the information that we are seeing and square it with what we have previously seen.  When the brain has difficulty matching what it knows to be true (or has learned from experience to be true) with what we are looking at, it tends to take on a leadership role in transforming the scene into what it “should be.”  Hence, static and straight lines become moving, curved ones.   Susana Martinez-Conde, Director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, AZ, defines visual illusions as “the dissociation between physical reality and subjective perception of an object or event.”  It appears that when we view an optical illusion, we are experiencing “the ways in which the brain can fail to recreate the physical world.”

eyesThe brain’s re-creation of the physical world begins the day we are born – the first time we set our eyes upon a physical object.  Our first sighting may be blurry and limited to a face, but the information that we obtain from it becomes part of our visual memory.  As newborns, however, we suffer from too many disorganized visual cortex connections, “which must be carefully pruned, based upon visual experience, into crisply defined columns.”  Less is more in the case of our development of fine detail and shape and pattern recognition skills.  Vision skillsranging from color and form perception, to face and object recognition, and to motion and spatial awareness are strongly influenced by “expectations based on past experience.”   Vision is the dominant sense in the acquisition of approximately 75-80% of what we learn and is a powerful force for how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.  It is this very power, however, that can lead the brain to incorrectly “see and respond to the visual world,” as it is drawn into misperceptions while it attempts to match what it knows with what it sees.  While visual perception plays a key role in the misperception of an optical image – resulting in an optical illusion, it also maintains a significant place in the mastery of handwriting skills.  “From the detection of light and dark in the retina, to the abstraction of lines and edges…to the interpretation of objects and their spatial relationships in higher visual areas, each task in visual perception illustrates the efficiency and strength of the human visual system,” and its vital link to handwriting mastery.

In order to appreciate the mystery of optical illusions and their visual perceptual link to handwriting skills, we must begin with the one fundamental necessity for efficient handwriting – automaticity.  Virginia Berninger, in her paper “The ‘Write Stuff’ for Preventing and Treating Disabilities,” identifies handwriting automaticity as “a strong predictor of the quality of composition in normally developing and disabled writers.” Automaticity, in this context, is defined as the ability to correctly produce letters without having to consciously think about them.  When a writer can do this quickly, “memory space is freed up for higher level composing processes, such as what to write about, what to say and how to say it.”  Automaticity does not develop automatically, however.  It is heavily dependent upon guided handwriting instruction and practice.   As a student delves into the world of shapes, letters, and words, he begins to develop the visual perceptual skills that he will need for automatic writing.   The lines, angles, and curves that form letters begin to transform into communication tools in his long-term memory, ready memoryfor retrieval and storage into his short-term visual memory for use in writing quickly, legibly, and creatively.  The writing process from start to finish – from scribbling as a toddler to fluent handwriting skills – is a complex one that involves a myriad of strengths.  Physical, cognitive, and visual skills lay the foundation for automaticity…and the ability to see into the future.

Dr. Mark Changizi, in his book, The Vision Revolution, compares our ability to think about the future with our ability to see the future. Thinking about what will or might happen tomorrow is reflective of words and sentences coursing through our thoughts.  Sometimes we get it right and other times quite wrong.  Dr. Changizi states that, “visual perception is just a special variety of mental processes, one that leads to seeing rather than sentences running through your mind.”  He describes the visual system as one that creates “a perception that represents the way the world should look in the future” and that we must concede that it sometimes will get it wrong.  Optical illusions are an example of a misperception resulting from our brain trying to predict the future.  But he cautions us against worrying that these misperceptions are the result of faulty brain-vision designs.  Instead, he presents his theory that they are “useful fictions” and actually have a purpose in guiding our behavior as we interact with our world (as in the case of “filling in the blanks” when we can only see a portion of a familiar object).  Misperceptions occur when the object or event that we are perceiving “does not compute” with our experience of how that object should look or how the event should play out.  The brain steps in to make it right by rearranging the facts a bit, encouraging a match with a memory byte it has stored from the past.  This makes for great fun with optical illusions; but in the case of handwriting automaticity, “useful fictions” serve a more important function as they guide a writer’s behaviors by “filling in the blanks” for letters and words.

As we are composing or copying written material, we can’t wait around for the brain to figure out what is wrong and to make adjustments.    achesWhen a writer begins to form the letter “H” starting with the first vertical line, he must already KNOW that the next two lines are another vertical and a horizontal link.  As he writes, the information he produces matches his perception of the letter in his stored memory and he can quickly move on to the next letter.  In reverse, if he sees a vertical line with a short horizontal line extending from the middle right side of it, he will quickly form the letter “H” in his mind’s eye, allowing him to read or reproduce it. No matter the font,  an “H” is an “H” according to his visual perception!

In all cases, he is seeing into the future.

Our visual perceptual skills are in a constant state of motion. Neuroscientist Mo Costandi stresses that we do not see the world as it actually is.  Instead, he contends that “our perception of the world is the brain’s best guess at what is actually happening based upon the information it receives through the senses.”   Movement is a key component in learning as it engages the senses, particularly our vision.  As we learn through the experience of our bodies’ movement – from our trunks to our fingers – while they travel through space, we begin to understand how our bodies work and how they interact with the other objects in our environment.  This is vital to our development of directional concepts and spatial awareness.  These are not only critical skills for navigating physically through our lives, but they form the foundation for handwriting mastery.    Movement continues to play a significant role in our perception of the world as we use the skills we have learned.  Dr. Changizi stresses that we cannot “simply sit back and wait for the world to tell us what’s happening.”  Life, indeed, would be passing us by, both figuratively and literally.  Our visual perceptual skills need to be focused and engaged as we anticipate “the next moment and build a completed perception of it by the time it arrives,” moving with the moment – or at least a tenth of a second behind it.  (I suggest you turn to page 134 in Dr. Changizi’s book for this!)   Handwriting mastery – not simply the learning of handwriting – begins when a writer can anticipate the next movement of his hand in the production of letters before he is required to perform it.  Letter recognition, automaticity, and creativity demand that we remain one step ahead of our visual perception, staying clear of misperceptions.

Unlike optical misperceptions, there is no illusion to handwriting mastery – it’s all very visible, indeed. 

handwriting2Photo Credit and interesting
handwriting article at this link:
Law School Ninja

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author:  Katherine J. Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L:    Katherine J. Collmer, M.Ed., OTR/L, is a pediatric occupational therapist who owns and operates a clinic that specializes in the assessment and remediation of handwriting skills.  She can be contacted via her website, Handwriting With Katherine.

 

Disclaimer:  Information presented by this author is not to be considered medical advice for any individual for whom she has not assessed or treated.   It is not to be used in place or in lieu of the advice from the readers’ medical team.  It is provided as a source of information which the readers can share with and bring questions raised to the medical professionals on their, or their family members’, teams.

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