Developing good pencil grip

Occupational therapy

﻿Hi, I'm really looking forward to our lesson today. I hope you are too. Before we get started, this is just a little reminder. We're here to support any approaches you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know that this lesson is going to be going out to so many different children and families. So if you're not sure about anything or have any questions, then please do contact your usual therapy team. In today's lesson on hand-writing, we're going to be looking at your pencil grip. And that's simply means how you're holding your pen or your pencil, and making sure that it's the most comfortable and the best for you. I want you to try the following hand warm-ups before each hand-writing session. This is really important for getting your hands ready for writing. Try and do each activity or each little warm-up, say, 10 times. If you're finding that it's tricky to do one warm-up with both hands together at the same time, then just do one hand at a time. Hands open and closed. Nice fist and open, stretch those fingers. Now we're going to interlock our fingers, and squeeze our hands. You can see how white my fingertips are going because I'm squeezing and getting all of that feedback into my hands and my fingers, okay? Squeeze. Now I want you to clasp your fingers and just pull. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. Excellent. Next, let's do some finger taps on the table. If you struggle doing both hands at once, then just do one hand at a time. You can also try finger taps on the tips of your thumbs, okay? So take each finger and just gently touch their fingers tip to your thumb. Now do some finger pulls and squeezes. Squeeze your fingers as you pull them up and away from your body. This is really good activity for getting your fingers ready for writing. And don't forget your thumbs. And if you want to do an extra challenge, you could try some finger separations. Okay, so those were your hand warm-ups. Please remember to do them before each handwriting session. Why should we practise our pencil grip? And why should we make it better? Well, there are so many muscles in our hands that they have to be strong to hold our pencil and move our fingers, to make tiny careful little letters, okay? It takes a lot of practise to get our hands and fingers used to holding a pencil. If we don't hold a pencil well, our hands will get tired very quickly. And that will then mean that our work won't be as neat and tidy as it could be. If our handwriting is not neat and tidy, a teacher may struggle to read what we've written. And as we get older, we have to write for longer. So it's better to have strong hands. And so we need to work on getting strong muscles in our hands. Pause the video now to get the following items. Some tweezers, small toys, such as pom poms, or little scrunched up pieces of paper, chalk and talk board or crayon and paper, some play-doh or resistance party, such as TheraPutty, and then small toys to hide in the play-dohs, such as beads and marbles. Restart once you're done. For our first activity, we're going to be using tweezers. And, we're looking at using tweezers to make our hands stronger. Because the stronger our hands are, the longer we can write for. And what I want you to do is to sit at a table with some small toys plays to one side of you and the box or basket to put them in on the other side, take the tweezers with your writing hand, one at a time, pick the toys, and place them into the box. Try and cross your body, and then you're going to do that with your other hand as well. Try and hold the tweezers so that you have your thumb on one side, and the other two fingers for your tripod grip on the other side, okay? As you get stronger, use tweezers that have more resistance. Pause the video now to have a go with your tweezers. Restart once you're finished. For the next activity, we're going to use some broken chalk or crayon. And the reason for this is that if we use a very small pencil to write with, the only place to put our fingers is right on the pencil, okay? So ask an adult to break off the end of a bit of chalk or crayon for you so that it's only that big. And then, just have a go at drawing whatever you want and just think about how it feels. Okay? So you can see I'm trying out different crayons. The first one, is thick. And, can you see how I'm holding my crayon? Okay, there's a nice space where the pencil is resting. The next crayon I'm going to show you is a triangular one. And that again, promotes a really nice grip and a nice position for your crayon to rest in, okay? Look at where my other fingers are. That means that I have lots of control. Sometimes you'll see these funny pencil, sorry, funny crayons. And, you could put them on the tip of your finger, or you can hold them with all your fingers to encourage a really good strong grip as well. And of course, we've got the teeny tiny little crayons, which you can see. If you hold it with your whole hand, you won't be able to use it. And when it's tiny, you really have to hold it in a really good position. Which is our tripod grip. Pause the video now to have a go. Restart once you're finished. For our next activity, we're going to do a play-doh treasure hunt. And this is another fun way to get our hands stronger, to help hold the pencil better. So, ask an adult to hide some small toys in some play-doh or resistance putty for you. And these could be small toys, like little beads, ideally. If you only have a small amount of play-doh or putty, then you could hide teeny tiny little items, okay? And then what you're going to do, if you have a look there, you can see, you're going to dig through, there you got to look at that. Oh, what have I found? A blue gem, okay? So you're going to dig through the play-doh and see what you can find, right? Pause the video to try play-doh treasure hunt. Restart once you're finished. To make this activity easier or harder, you can use tweezers, that are easier, or you can use larger toys so that it's better for you to grab a hold of them. If your hands get tired really quickly, try using all your fingers on the tweezers until that becomes a little bit easier. You could also get loads of pencil grips that you could add to your pencil that will help remind you of a better way to hold it, yeah? And you can try practising drawing or colouring where these, until you find the one that works just right for you. An adult will be able to help you with this. Remember, do the best for you. Take your time, and as always, try your best, 'cause that is good enough. Practise, practise, practise. If you'd like to, please ask your parents to carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Developing good pencil grip

Developing good pencil grip

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

Lesson slides

Lesson details

Key learning points

Equipment

Licence

Lesson video

Worksheet