Tips for Outside the Box Learning Series: How to Use Art to Teach Handwriting

Handwriting is one of the subjects that causes the most frustration in my house. My older two girls learned handwriting in private school. The never complained and just did what the teacher told them to do.

That was not the case with my youngest child, the one I had to teach to read, write, and everything. She has what is known as weak hands, but at first, I just thought she was being defiant and not wanting to do her schoolwork.

Thankfully, I decided to work on building her hand strength doing things she loves to do. Art, but art comes in many different and finding what your child enjoys is important.

So, my Tip is this: Look for creative ways to encourage the end results.

Art is creative by definition

Since art is creativity by definition, it is a great resource to use in your homeschooling journey. By combining the subjects, you lesson the work, and get a great since of accomplishment. Win win.

But HOW? Good question, with lots of answers. What I did was break out the paints. First we did finger painting, encouraging making shapes, then filling in lines, then using qtips, building on fine motor skills.

Then we used markers, and gel pens. I included copy work with each piece of art, simple things like writing her name and date at first, then adding a sentence or two about the work, or a bible verse that matched the theme created.

Let your child use paint, markers or gel pens to write, it feels like an extension of their art, and it encourages them to continue to build up the muscles in their hands.

What about paper waste?

This is schoolwork, if you waste some paper because they used a market or a pen, then starting over isn’t wasted, it is a learning tool.

PS. I believe most homeschools waste a lot less paper than any other type of school, but that is just my opinion.

But my child isn’t in Kindergarten

It doesn’t really matter what age your child is. Ask them what medium they want to write in. Design hand writing practice to follow their interests. The purpose of art is to build up hand muscles, it is also to get them to understand things like legibility, if you can’t read what they wrote then what is even the point. You want your child to take ownership of their handwriting and see the worth in making it readable.

What about crayons?

If your child likes them, then use them. All three of my kids HATED crayons. They broke easily, didn’t color smoothly, couldn’t keep a point, melted in the sun, on and on. So, while I keep a box around, for some of our few math worksheets that ask for crayons, we just don’t use them. You certainly can. In fact, I have a whole bunch of printable coloring pages free in my Printable Resource page, You can sign up for my free newsletter get access to it.

More creative suggestions

Ways to use coloring pages for kids that can’t stand crayons. Print onto cardstock, or heavier weight art paper, like watercolor paper. Find out what the heaviest paper your printer can take is so that your child can still get the benefits of learning control by painting in the lines.

Other options include printing on regular paper, then using modge podge to transfer the ink from regular paper to something like canvas.