Hi everyone!
In my previous blog post “Fine Motor Bins for August” I spoke about the importance of fine motor skills, and it just so happens that ‘Pencil Control’ comes into that category also!
This book contains a set of 20 pencil control worksheets which provide a variety of fun ways for children to practice their hand-eye co-ordination by tracing basic straight lines. Starting points and arrows are visible on the activity sheets in dotted lines to enable the children to trace straight lines in different directions. Kiddos will have the opportunity to trace left to right, right to left, up and down, down and up and diagonally.
This book is super easy to prepare for use; you can print them and give them directly to your children to complete as is, or can laminate them and use with dry erase markers to use them over and over again. If you wish to store these in a binder, you could place them inside a plastic sleeve.
There are a range of difficulty levels provided in this work book, some with just a few simple tracing lines, some with multiple short lines, some narrow lines and some with extra long lines to trace and control their pencil over.
Holding and writing with a pencil can be difficult or some kiddos so it needs practice because it requires fine motor muscle strength and dexterity to do the ‘pincer grip’ and control the pencil to correctly form letters and lines.
In order for children to be able to develop hand-writing skills, pencil control must be encouraged repetitively and refined to support development in everyday task handling. This is where “Pencil Control-straight lines’ book comes in handy to get your kiddos practicing straight lines before they tackle the more difficult shapes and curves later on.
Fine motor skills are required to do multiple tasks like brushing of teeth, eating with cutlery, brushing hair and tying shoelaces; so strengthening their small muscles through practicing controlling a pencil, is a great stepping stone for success in future years.
In addition to learning pencil control, kiddos will learn about ‘direction’ when tracing the lines (up, down, left, right, diagonal) but will also have a lot of fun colouring in the activity sheets.
For extra support doing these tasks, you could ask the kiddos to try their best to concentrate to colour within the lines and do their best tracing directly onto the lines. This will stimulate their brain and allow for optimal learning to be done as they take time and direct the pencils where it needs to go.
Some of the pages have long and narrow lines to be traced and this will require a little more patience and concentration to control the pencil to draw straight all the way down.
‘Pencil control –straight lines’ is great for individual learning in a classroom setting or even out on the go. Children can also enjoy this task with their peers at table time and can have so much fun being creative with their colouring-in 🙂
Happy teaching 🙂
To purchase the resource from my TpT store, click here or the image below.
