Copyright © 2016 Alene Villaneda, Integrated Learning Strategies

This ha d ook refere es Trai the Brai to Pay Ate io The Write Way, hi h is a tea hi g fra e ork
origi ated y Jea ete Far er, eriied ha d rii g re ediaio spe ialist. This ha d ook is ot ailiated
ith, or has it ee re ie ed, appro ed, or e dorsed y Jea ete Far er.

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Disclaimer: The activities and exercises in this handbook are
designed for children and require close adult supervision and
assistance. The activities and exercises in this book are not
intended to replace therapeutic evaluation or intervention by a
trained therapist. By doing any of the exercises or activities in this
book, you take sole responsibility for how the activities are done.
Integrated Learning Strategies assumes no responsibility.

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This book is designed for therapists, teachers, other child
development professionals, and parents to use as a guide for
supporting cognitive development, fine motor skills and emotional
grounding.
Therapists can use the exercises and activities on their own or to
create training programs for clients to use in therapy sessions or to
give to families to practice at home.
In every classroom, teachers will encounter children who struggle
with behavior issues, low self-esteem, poor fine motor
development, emotional outbursts and gaps in learning. The
activities and exercises in this handbook are crucial for rewiring
the brain to support emotional stability, attention, reading, fine
motor, hand-eye coordination and visual perception.
In addition, there are those children who perform academically
well in school, but are prone to meltdowns, tantrums, anxiety, over
anxiousness and are constantly moving. Children with these issues
can benefit from penmanship exercises to develop impulse control,
sustained attention and emotional grounding.
All of the exercises and activities in this book are designed to be
fun, playful, and easy for anyone to work into their daily routine. If
you have concerns about your child's development or ability to
complete any of the activities in this book, consult a vision
therapist, pediatric therapist or occupational therapist.
For better results, combine the exercises included in this handbook
with music therapy for better auditory processing and emotional
grounding.
When we are children, life seems simple and fun. It usually
involves imaginative play, creativity, make believe, arts and crafts
and emotional growth. For the first few years of life, children live
and thrive on the right side of their brain. It drives their creativity
and their emotions.
As children grow older, they eventually transition to more left-
brained tasks needed for reading, writing, spelling, logical thinking
and emotional stability. If children are not given the right tools and
resources when they are young to transition from right-brained
thinking to left-brained thinking, many times learning delays begin
to appear. Or, if a child experiences developmental delays or is
required to do tasks their brain isn’t ready for, it may cause
underachievement in the classroom.
Jeanette Farmer, certified handwriting and remediation specialist
said, “When the right brain dominant child is thrown into a left-
brain system and expected to perform using processing skills not
yet in place, stress and anxiety sets the child up for failure in
trying to meet expectations.”
Research supports this theory as approximately 40% of young
children are not prepared intellectually, socially or emotionally to
enter school.
For this reason, we need to wire and train the brain while the child
is young to prepare them for a better learning experience as they
grow older. To accomplish this task, children need multi-sensory
handwriting activities for positive input that prepares the brain for
learning.
Handwriting exercises help prep the brain for planning, reviewing,
organizing, attending, expressing and speaking. Forming letters,
words and sentences must eventually become automatic for
children. If they cannot identify one letter to the next, they won’t be
able to effectively communicate ideas or turn expressive language
and their thoughts into well-written and organized text.
Handwriting exercises also improve fine motor skills, tracking
ability, sentence structure and sequential learning for math. Tasks
like these provide opportunities for teachers and parents to
recognize gaps in learning while children are young. Some of the
benefits of these exercises include the following:
You will be able to identify fine-motor problems
You will improve tracking, retention, pencil grip, letter
directionality and proprioception (muscles and joints)
You will help the child establish dominance
You will enhance visual perception, visual-motor skills, crossing
the midline and hand-eye coordination
You will provide more opportunities for emotional grounding and
sensory-motor development
A common misconception is that handwriting activities are only
used to improve fine motor development, pencil grip, better
handwriting and letter recognition. However, these types of
exercises are also linked to helping children who are often
impulsive, lack attention and focus, display disruptive behavior
and experience a lot of stress or anxiety.
Children with these issues have not yet bridged the gap between
their right brain and their left brain, which allows strong emotions
to surface and lets disruptive behaviors take over. Many times
children are so focused on controlling their emotions, they can’t free
up their brain for higher learning concepts.
Because more schools have higher expectations when it comes to
learning at younger ages, whole body movement activities and
longer recess periods have dwindled, which is why behavior and
attention issues have increased. Movement is needed for early
sensory-motor development, which also impacts the emotional side
of the child’s brain.
Because multi-sensory handwriting exercises unifies the
connection between the right and left sides of the brain, it shifts
the dominance of the child’s emotional state in the right brain to a
more stabilized environment in the left brain, creating controlled
emotions and logical thinking. It organizes the brain and provides
coping skills to achieve greater emotional control.
Farmer said, “Research indicates that handwriting taps the
emotions. Likewise, rhythmic movement generates a sense of well
being.”
As a child progresses in school, they face increased demands on their visual
system. The print size of letters and words in textbooks becomes smaller, they
must retain large quantities of information, and the amount of time expected
to read and study increases significantly, many times before your child’s visual
system is fully developed and ready for this type of learning.

When a student has poor visual skills, it may impact their ability to organize
their writing and it may impair their capacity to form letters and line up
letters and words. When children have poor visual abilities, handwriting also
suffers. A child’s vision system leads the hand when writing, which means a
poorly functioning ocular system can cause trouble with directionality, writing
in a stationary line, neatness, and organization. Laterality and directionality
play into your child’s visual-spatial writing skills. If directionality is a problem,
learning to read can be very confusing, apart from writing letters. The letters,
“b,” “d,” “p,” and “q” often look like the same symbol if your child does not have
a good concept of orientation. If your child also struggles with visual-spatial
issues, you may notice they don’t understand how to properly space their
letters as they write across the page.

If a child struggles with visual perception, you may notice some of the
following:
 Lacks ability to track words on a page
 Adds letters or removes letters from words
 Illegible handwriting or writes their letters backward
 Difficulty holding their pencil correctly
 Skips lines or words
 Can’t cross the midline with their eyes while reading
Children with poor fine motor skills often dislike writing activities
or any activities with paper and pencil. That is why we have
incorporated several fun games and activities to improve your
child’s fine motor for a more enjoyable and interactive experience
rather than tedious and painful one.
Before you begin the exercises in this handbook, you must check
the child or student for a retained Palmar reflex. If the child has
retained this reflex, it means their pincer grasp for handwriting,
fine motor and pencil grip has not properly developed. Special
exercises are needed to integrate this reflex before you can begin
seeing improvements in the child’s fine motor development with
this handwriting handbook.
Fine motor movements require coordination of small muscles in the
hands and fingers. If your child has difficulty with their fine motor
development, you may notice that they struggle with pencil grip
and have weak muscles in their hands, wrists and elbows. They
may also have trouble with simple tasks like using a fork, cutting,
threading beads, tying shoelaces and buttoning. For this reason,
fine motor activities are needed in cooperation with handwriting
exercises to build the muscles for better motor achievement.
Handwriting exercises will enhance the child’s muscle strength,
coordinated movements and hand dominance.
Now that we know why handwriting exercises are important for
retraining the brain for higher learning concepts, you are ready to
help kids reach their academic and emotional potential.

Here are some fun and unique exercises to get you on the “WRITE”
track. Children should practice each exercise on a regular basis
until mastered or until they have grasped it the “WRITE” way.
Activity 1:

You will need a jar and coins of all sizes. Have your child use
their thumb and index finger (pincer grasp) to add one coin at a
time to the jar.
The child can use both the right and left hand one at a time
(not together); however, you will want the child to practice this
activity additional times with their dominant hand. Encourage
them to pick it up directly from the table rather than sliding it
across the table to pick it up more easily.
If you do not have spare change lying around, try beans,
Cheerios or beads.
Activity 2:

You will need string and beads of all sizes. Have the child
practice threading the string through the beads. Help them use
their dominant hand to do the threading while using the pincer
grasp (thumb and index finger).
Encourage the child to thread both larger and smaller beads.
You can make a necklace, bracelet or take the beads off and
start again.
Activity 3:

You will need a pair of tweezers, a bowl and small pieces of pipe
cleaner (Cheerios, pompoms, beads, beans, etc. are optional).
Have the child hold the tweezers in their dominant hand. Using
only the dominant hand, help the child pick up the pieces of
pipe cleaner with the tweezers and add it to the bowl.
You can switch hands to strengthen the muscles of the non-
dominant hand, but have the child practice more often with
their dominant hand.
Activity 4:

You will need larger beads and a smooth, hard surface (table
preferable). Have your child use their dominant hand for catch-
ing and their non-dominant hand for serving. While sitting at
the table, instruct the child to pick up a bead with their serving
(non-dominant) hand, keeping both hands about shoulder-
width a part. With the serving hand, have your child slide and
release the bead across the table.
The bead should slide across the table to the dominant hand.
The dominant hand must catch the bead as it slides across the
table. Instruct the child to keep the first bead in the dominant
hand (palm closed over the bead) and start the exercise over
again.
Eventually, the dominant hand will have a whole handful of
beads to strengthen and control their fine motor skills.
Have your child trace the dotted side of the Christmas tree then create the other half of the tree.
Have your child trace the
dotted swirl image first then
try to create their own swirl.
When they have successfully
created their own swirl have
them try to recreate it again on
a chalkboard or marker board.
Activity 1:

You will need a tennis ball for this activity. Have your child
take the tennis ball in their non-dominant hand and lift it to
their forehead (touching the forehead slightly).

Have the dominant hand in the ready position lower on their

body, close to their waist. Drop the ball with the non-dominant
hand into the dominant hand.
Switch hands and repeat activity.
Activity 2: You will need a hole puncher and the hole punch
activity page for this exercise. With the hole punch activity
page, have your child punch holes on the hole markers. Instruct
them to use their dominant hand, however, the non-dominant
hand can participate as well. Your child will create fun objects
using the hold punch to strengthen the wrists, fingers, elbows
and palms of the hands.
Connect the dots and color.
 Shape Tracing

Trace each shape following allow with the arrows.

Help the elephant find the peanut
 Color by number
Color the fish according to the designated numbers.
Help the Zebra get back to the Zoo