We have use a whole school approach to improving letter formation and handwriting. The scheme that we use is called Kinetic Letters. It is based on ensuring the children have the strength in their bodies, arms, wrists, hands and fingers to prepare them for the skill of handwriting.
 

As part of this we have been doing lots of activities that will make our bodies stronger for writing. You could try some of these activities at home...

• We do some of our writing lying on our tummies, resting on our elbows with our legs out straight; we call this our strong body position. We also do our writing with the whiteboards stuck onto the wall as this builds strength in our core, which helps to support a comfortable and strong writing position at the tables.
• To make our ‘three friends’ (thumb and first two fingers on our writing hand) really strong we have been doing lots of pinching and squeezing activities using rubber bands, pegs, play dough, foam shapes and tweezers and threading activities.

Practise the 5 core positions of Kinetic Letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhaNtxumgOs
 

Once the children learn to form the letters, they hear stories about Brave Monkey and Scared Monkey who help them to know where to start their letters. We use special whiteboards to give the children a prompt to remember this.

Ask your child about Bounce (brave monkey) and Skip (scared monkey) to find out more!

Please download the 'Kinetic Letters paper' and print or draw the tree on a piece of paper for your child to practise their letters and letter families. 

Jumper Family youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPJw36vSJNc