School education, both primary and secondary, is focused on the child's free possession of writing, hatching and drawing skills. Graphomotor skills are understood as the ability to use writing objects and coordinate the actions of the working hand with mental actions. What is important here, first of all, is the accuracy of the movements, their pace, as well as the child’s ability to relatively easily reproduce the actions of an adult, that is, to act according to a given pattern.
The period of development of graphomotor skills begins in early childhood, and how the child begins to learn in school will depend on how early it begins and how intense it will take.
Recent History of Preschool and Primary Education
In Soviet times, the curriculum in preschool educational institutions (kindergartens) and elementary schools devoted a lot of attention to the development of graphomotor skills in preschoolers and primary schoolchildren. You could even say that this was one of the priority accents of education. In kindergartens - both in the preparatory group and in the younger ones - teachers in special classes taught children to hold the writing instrument correctly, take the correct posture when writing, they taught them to work in lined notebooks, explaining what the lines are and what the fields are.
In addition, in any kindergarten, children were traditionally taught the accuracy of completing tasks, the repetition of the same action, the correctness of hatching, etc. Thus, the child was prepared for school both psychologically and physically: he imagined with what requirements he may collide, and the fine muscles of the fingers were already at least somewhat prepared for further development.
In elementary school, the controlled development of graphomotor skills in children continued also intensively. The program provided an opportunity for an elementary school teacher to “put his hand” on a first grader, who performed numerous exercises in copybooks and workbooks, and the development of writing skills was a priority.
Modernity
Modern educational standards do not imply such dense work on the formation of graphomotor skills in children. Despite its complexity and floridness, pre-school and primary education pays very little attention to setting hands. Yes, and at home, children's leisure quite often eliminates the need for the child to practice writing and drawing, the reason for this is the permission for parents to play with a tablet, smartphone or computer.
Meanwhile, the primary school curriculum implies that the child must begin learning already having the basics of writing, that is, with a modern first-grader, graphomotor skills should be much more developed than in the Soviet one. At the same time, less attention is paid to the development of fine motor skills of hands at lessons in elementary school . Meanwhile, all further education, at least in basic disciplines, is still based on dynamic writing.
One of the troubles of a modern student
The disharmony of the requirements for the child is obvious. On the one hand, the school curriculum has become much more complicated, and on the other hand, the curriculum does not allow the development of basic skills, which, apparently, is supposed to develop in a certain background mode, by themselves. If we add to this that, as already mentioned, children write and draw much less at home than before, then the problems of most children are pretty predictable.
Too many first-graders do not cope with the program, lag behind the requirements, and therefore the success of all further education is a big question. And this is not an exaggeration of the problem: most modern teachers agree that with an objective look at a modern student, a low level of knowledge is obvious. Of course, the point here is not only the competent development of graphomotor skills, but also in the education system as a whole, however, the role of raising hands should in no way be underestimated.
Parents task
Thus, modern parents who want to keep their child's education on their own will have an important, but with a responsible and competent approach, quite feasible and generally elementary task - the development of fine muscles of the hands, the development of motor skills. Graphomotor skills can be formed outside the walls of educational institutions, and, objectively speaking, they are formed much more successfully when daily attention is paid to them at home.
Main conditions: regularity of studies and guidelines
The main mistakes that parents make are not in the field of methodology or strategy, but in the field of elementary discipline.
Firstly, tasks that form the graphomotor skills of preschoolers should be given to the baby regularly and constantly, for them there should be time literally every day. This is the main condition that the hand will develop stably, without jerking and excessive efforts, causing the whole family negative emotions and which can lead to the child refusing to exercise.
When giving tasks, in no case do not discard used albums and notebooks, they need to be stored, and not only for memory. They are very important in order to return to them and analyze how much the child has progressed, whether he has progress. If he is, then this must be demonstrated to him. If there is no difference between the records with an interval of six months, then this is an occasion to reflect on whether adequate requirements are imposed on the child, whether he has guidelines.
Demanding for the baby, providing him with guidelines, incentives and samples - this is the second main condition for the formation of graphomotor skills and many others. The child must be well aware of what he is learning; what he already knows and what he must learn; what is easy for him and what is given to him with great difficulty; when he is doing well, and when he is doing so badly. Many parents prefer only to praise the child, believing that this is a good way to positive learning and to the desire of the child to learn. However, this is a big mistake. To hide from the baby that he is doing something badly, does not try, is to deceive him and stop his development, to deprive of happiness the feeling that he really learned something.
Zone of proximal development
To know what to praise a child for, what to demand from him and what tasks to offer, each adult should be aware of what immediate goals a child should achieve. If they are too far away, then the child will not be able to feel their reachability. If the tasks are too simple, then the training will not move forward. In pedagogy, there is the concept of “zone of proximal development” - this is the area of development of the child that is achievable in the near future, but for which the child should make efforts.
In accordance with this concept, graphomotor skills are developed in children. An adult should set a goal for the child that is “visible” to both him and the teacher, and all tasks should be a little more difficult than those that the child performs without putting effort.
Development vector
Each child develops at his own pace, and in each family at different times, opportunities and needs may arise for the development of graphomotor skills in preschool children. However, no matter what age the child's parents decide to develop it and whatever features are inherent in him, the stages and vector of development, in essence, are the same for everyone.
In classes, you need to move from large and thick objects to thin ones, from elementary tasks to more complex ones, from short classes to long ones, from simplified requirements to more rigid ones.
Background and Directional Jobs
In essence, any games where controlled movements of the hand and fingers are involved work on the development of graphomotor skills. Now there are many so-called developmental toys, involving precise and subtle movements. Modeling, weaving, small designers, mosaics are also very useful. However, the game and the listed activities are just the background and the ground for the development of graphomotor skills proper.
As soon as possible it is worthwhile to offer the child thick felt-tip pens or crayons so that he can try out the instrument. As a rule, if the baby is not given a specific task, his samples will consist in drawing indefinite stripes. This is a necessary stage, but you should not linger on it for a long time. When he is exhausted, he should show the child how to properly hold the writing subject, and gradually give simple and elementary tasks that advance him to writing and drawing.
Job types
You can start classes on the development of specific writing skills with the following types of exercises:
1. Connection of two points by a line. It does not occur to many that even this child needs to be taught and started as early as possible. Everyone can test how difficult this can be by trying to hold the handle with their toes (by the way, this exercise is also extremely useful for children). The handle of the child in the degree of development of subtle and specific movements is not much different from the foot of an adult.
Position the points so that the resulting line is either horizontal, then vertical, or diagonal. Do not let your baby turn a piece of paper. As the child grows, complicate the task. Gradually, you will come to drawing by numbered points and drawing complex patterns from cells, as well as graphic dictations.
2. Drawing on the stimulating line (stroke). Draw with a dotted line or a very thin line any drawing and offer to circle it. This task will accompany the child until the mastery of the letter is completed, the last stage will be difficult recipe, according to which the child will learn to write the letters of the alphabet of their native and foreign languages.
3. Hatching. The ability to draw lines in one direction, limited to a certain area and adjacent to each other, will teach the child to paint and prepare for drawing with paints.
Do not forget that a person is easiest to learn anything if he is given the opportunity to observe how another person does it. Drawing and writing in the presence of a child, completing tasks in front of him will greatly simplify the development of his graphomotor skills and ensure the success and dynamism of learning.