There are a few different things that you may notice if your child has trouble holding a pencil properly.

Isolating finger

You may notice that your child has too many fingers involved. This usually means that your child does not have enough strength in the small muscles of their hands.  Because they do not feel strong enough to hold the pencil, they use too many fingers (i.e. more than the thumb, index and middle fingers).

Thumb wrapping

You may notice that your child wraps or curls their thumb around the pencil too much.  This prevents free movement of the pencil and effects pencil control.  This is usually because of lack of strength in the small muscles of the hands, and your child is attempting to stabilise the pencil with the thumb.

What can you do?

Lots of activities designed to strengthen the small muscles of the hand.  The challenge is to find fine motor activities that they will enjoy so that they can build up the necessary muscles in their hands and feel more confident in their fine motor skills. Any activities that involve “pinching” are excellent.

• Clothes pegs – use them to hang up art work, or doll’s clothes, to build a fence around an ice-cream container, or pretend that they are crocodiles.
• Playdough- encourage lots of pinching e.g. making pinch pots, roll a snake and pinch it, or make a dragon and pinch spikes up along its back.
• Use tweezers to pick up small items as a race or to sort small items into categories. This is particularly beneficial if the tweezers are held in a similar position to a pencil.
• Rolling small balls of putty or playdough and even practising soccer flicks into a soccer goal (great for isolating fingers)
• Spray bottles with large handles encourage finger opposition and increase muscle strength of the entire hand. Water pistols will encourage opposition of the thumb, index and middle fingers.  Your child can water the plants with the spray bottles.
• Tearing paper by holding between the thumb, index and middle fingers.
• Eye-dropper filled with food colouring to make a ‘water drip’ picture as this requires the thumb and index fingers for precise ‘drips’.
• Any type of cutting activity will enhance pencil control as the fingers and muscles required for cutting are the same fingers and muscles are used for both.
• With the following activities, start with start with larger items and move on to small items:
  • Unscrewing nuts and bolts
  • Spinning tops
  • Buttoning and unbuttoning
  • Lacing and threading activities

Keep an eye out for the next blog on pencil grip development where we will focus on arm and wrist movements that influence pencil grip.

If you have any concerns about your child’s pencil grip development get in touch with an occupational therapist to assess and support your family.

Written by Alannah Sofianos (OT)