Thursday, September 15, 2011

Ask the Audience: Pencil grip

Why is holding a pencil "correctly" important?  Why are some ways of holding it right and some wrong?

4 comments:

Lisa said...

Well, holding a pencil "correctly" allows for better control, which means more precise letters--better penmanship. But when you're learning to write, I say it doesn't matter so much. There's enough to worry about when trying to learn 52 letters and 10 numerals and even more punctuation. Figure out beautiful penmanship later.

Nikki said...

Lisa-

How do you know so much?!

Nikki

Ms. Leigh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ms. Leigh said...

It seems to me that grip is a developmental milestone. My boys progressed from grasping the pencil/crayon with all fingers to gradually to the "correct" grip as they aged without instruction. If a child of school age has not progressed, it is something they probably should learn for developmental reasons.

I also think that once a child is ready to start learning to draw straight lines, if they are still holding a pencil with a grasp with all fingers, they need to be corrected. It is always better to learn correctly to do something from the beginning vs. being allowed to do it incorrectly and have to be "retrained" later.