Doodlebug, thanks for your comments. May I ask what you generally recommend for a 6-7 year old with dysgraphia? We've experienced some success with home therapy using theraputty, hand exercises, and the Handwriting without Tears workbooks.
take care all-
Sorry for not responding sooner, just now popped back by to check on this thread. Being SI trained, I tend to stay away from rote drills for handwriting, believing that the underlying reasons need to be addressed before skills can be improved. But dysgraphia is a hard thing to treat, as there are so many different things that can be underlying the poor writing skills.
From my OT perspective, I am usually seeing kiddos who have low proximal muscle tone, overall low tone (including the hands), poor visual-motor skills, poor visual-perceptual skills (such as laterality, directionality or visual processing problems such as figure-ground) or visual efficiency skills (such as poor fixation, tracking or saccadic movement of the eyes).
I always recommend a developmental vision exam to rule out or treat any previously undiagnosed problems if appropriate.
When low muscle tone is the issue I do lots of vestibular and proprioceptive activities -- lots and lots of movement paired with gross and fine motor coordination and/or eye-hand coordination tasks. I do lots of activities like balancing on a tilt board while tossing beanbags at a target, or swinging on a platform while hitting a balloon.
Oral motor tasks that involve blowing or sucking help to activate core muscles - like blowing bubbles through a straw, sucking on a thick milkshake. Whistles, bubble blowers, horns, musical instruments (recorders, flutes, harmonicas) are all good ways to incorporate respiration activities into daily fun. A lot of kids with low muscle tone have very shallow, one dimensional breathing.
For perceptual skills we do obstacle courses, following maps and verbal directions, right/left discrimination activities, imitating postures games and some paper/pencil tasks like mazes, puzzles and drawing or tracing.
For visual efficiency skills we do things like bouncing a balloon on the hand as many times as you can, flash-light tag, catch and throw games (keeping eye on the target or the ball coming at you), I Spy games, and mazes on the blackboard.
I also use Therapeutic Listening and Interactive Metronome as adjuncts to more traditional OT intervention. I find that both programs have helped kids improve visual motor skills, improve handwriting and increase production of written work. In some cases, the legibility of the writing doesn't really improve, but the child's anxiety about writing decreases, which makes all the difference in the world for that child in producing written work.
The Handwriting without Tears program is a great one for teaching the mechanics of forming letters. But sometimes the issue is that the mechanics fall apart when the child has to be writing while at the same time thinking about the content of the writing. When the mechanics of handwriting are demanding too much in the way of cognitive energy, then there is very little energy left for the process of creative content. The goal should be to make handwriting as automatic as possible. When that doesn't work, then look at ways to compensate so that the child can create. Ultimately that's what really matters - the ability to produce that end product. The means to get there is just that - the way to get there. And there are many ways to get there other than handwriting the final product.
Hope that helps.
