How I Helped My Three-Year-Old Improve His Pencil Grip

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In August, Oliver started preschool. I knew he wasn’t ready for The Good and the Beautiful’s preschool curriculum yet because it was too heavily focused on writing and book work, which just isn’t what Oliver needs right now. As a wiggly boy who struggles to sit still or follow academic instructions, I knew he needed a more play-based, hands-on approach to help him transition in to school. I found some great preschool resources through Planning Playtime, which has a great mix of play-based learning and worksheets. I was excited to jump right in, but quickly discovered that Oliver’s pencil grip was still very immature. Instead of holding a pencil with an age-appropriate pincer grip, he was still holding it with his entire fist (which is more appropriate for 1–2 year-olds than it is for a 3.5-year-old). His grip was so bad that all he could do was scribble. He couldn’t trace, he couldn’t draw people or objects, and most of his scribbles only left faint marks on the paper because he couldn’t control the pencil or crayon well enough to make solid contact with the drawing surface. I really wanted to start our preschool curriculum, but it was clear that we wouldn’t get far without Oliver being able to appropriately use a pencil.

When I posted a homeschool update back in October, I mentioned the struggle Oliver and I had with his pencil grip and how much he’d improved since August. Several people reached out to me wanting to know more about how I helped him overcome his issues with fine motor skills and handwriting. So in this post I’m going to point out some fine motor red flags to watch out for as well as some tools to help your child improve their pencil grip and strengthen their fine motor skills overall. Before I begin, I think it’s important to emphasize that I am not an expert on this subject. I’m not an occupational therapist. While I’ve worked closely with and learned a lot from OTs when I was a special education teacher, I have no special training and everything I share has been accumulated through a combination of personal experience (both with my students and with my own kids) and some basic research into the subject. If your child is really struggling with their fine motor skills, writing and pencil grip in particular, seek the help of a trained occupational therapist. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s dive in!

First, what are fine and gross motor skills?

Fine motor skills require the use of the smallest muscles in our wrists, hands, and fingers. Activities like picking up or pinching small objects (think beads, dried beans, zipper toggles, or string) are fine motor activities. These skills are extremely valuable for your child because they’re necessary prerequisites to independent tasks like zipping their own coat, buckling their own seatbelt, or learning to write. Typing, playing an instrument, or braiding hair are examples of more advanced fine motor skills.

A gross motor skill is one that utilizes large muscles and muscle groups. When your child learns to crawl, walk, or climb they are developing a gross motor skill. As your kids get older, you might sign them up for sports or dance lessons. There they will develop more advanced gross motor skills like swinging a baseball bat, dribbling a ball, or doing a pirouette. Adults use a wide variety of fine motor and gross motor skills every day, so it’s important to encourage your children to do a wide variety of activities to teach these movements.

This leads us into what to look for when it comes to your child’s fine motor development. Both of my girls have been naturally good at fine motor activities, so holding a pencil came very easily to them. I’ve never had to correct their pencil grips at all, even as toddlers. My oldest has needed some additional help in learning gross motor skills, but she learned to draw, cut with scissors, and string beads at an early age. Eden, my youngest, has naturally developed both fine and gross motor skills with very little encouragement or direction from me. Oliver, on the other hand, has always been better with gross motor activities and showed little interest in fine motor skills. This never concerned me at the time but looking back I can see how his aversion to fine motor tasks should have been a red flag to me that he would struggle with pencil grip. Some of the things that Oliver avoided, struggled with, or showed little interest in include:

• Coloring and drawing
• Sorting small objects/loose parts
• Using a fork or spoon independently
• Stacking toys/blocks
• Turning pages of a book
• Using child-safe scissors (under supervision)
• Removing and replacing lids on markers or containers

Some of these tasks, like stacking blocks and turning pages of a book, were ones Oliver figured out relatively quickly and without any intervention from me. But others (coloring and drawing, sorting small objects, and using scissors) are ones he struggled with or showed no interest in until we started preschool. If your child is struggling with any of these skills, it isn’t automatically a sign that they’ll have difficulty learning to write. However, if you’re noticing that they frequently avoid these kinds of tasks, it may be a red flag to keep an eye on.

Once you’ve identified these red flags, what can you do about them? Developing fine motor skills is just like any other physical ability. Your body needs to practice the movement frequently, and your muscles need to be strengthened over time to perform the task. We don’t usually think of the muscles in our hands as needing a great deal of strength, but all muscles need to be exercised to function at their peak. Babies have such low muscle tone when they’re born that they can’t even lift their own heads. It takes practice and time for their muscles to develop the strength they need to hold their head, and eventually their entire body, upright. The same is true of little children’s hands. They have to do lots of grabbing, pinching, and pulling to develop the muscle tone necessary to do fine motor tasks.

The good news is that most fine motor skills for children can be developed through play! I’ve included a list of some of my favorite toys and tools for encouraging fine motor development in kids ages 1-3 and 3-5. These are great for any child, whether they’re struggling with fine motor tasks or not, but they also have the added benefit of strengthening all those small muscles in your child’s hands and developing important muscle memory.

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Fine Motor Toys: 1-3 | 1 – Pom Pom Sorting Tub | 2 – Watermelon Threader | 3 – Jumbo Lacing Beads | 4 – Baby Busy Board | 5 – Pop ‘n Play | 6 – Baby Carrot Harvest | 7 – Stretchy Noodles | 8 – Felt Apple Tree

Fine Motor Toys: 3-5 | Safety Scissors | Jumbo Tweezers | Geo Board | Sweet Pea Popper | Plus Plus Kit | Play-Doh Tool Kit | Shape Buttons | C-Clips

If you have noticed any of the red flags I mentioned earlier in your toddler or preschooler, you may feel like you need to launch a major intervention. But it’s important to remember that their hands are not fully developed at this age. Yes, we want our kids to reach age-appropriate developmental milestones when it comes to fine motor skills. But the goal is not to have good handwriting at 3-years-old. The goal is to build their strength and coordination. For example, once I noticed that Oliver’s pencil grip was too poor for me to teach writing skills, we switched gears to strengthening activities for his pincer grip (the pinching motion done with thumb and forefinger or thumb, forefinger, and middle finger together). At first, he was extremely resistant to these tasks, because they were difficult and frustrating for him. But over time, the muscles in his hands got stronger and he was able to do each task with less and less difficulty. These tasks included:

• Sorting buttons by shape into small cups
• Sorting counting bears by color into small cups
• Linking C-clips into chains
• Picking up pom-poms with tweezers (be sure to focus on using the thumb, index finger, and middle finger to pinch the tweezers instead of using the whole palm grip)
• Cutting paper with safety scissors
• Creating shapes out of toothpicks and mini marshmallows/grapes (this is one of my kids’ favorite activities! The marshmallows or grapes act as joints that hold together the toothpicks, but they also double as a snack. Kids are entertained and fed at the same time. Win-win!)
• Rolling Play-Doh or Playfoam into ball or log shapes

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There are also lots of real-world tasks your preschooler can do throughout the day that help them practice and strengthen their fine motor skills. Have them squeeze spray bottles, unload and sort the silverware from the dishwasher, or pick up straws, toothpicks, or noodles that you’ve dropped for them. These real-life skills all require little to no instruction and don’t require having to sit still and focus on an academic task like writing. If your child needs help with their pencil grip, take a look at your day and identify tasks your child can do independently that require small, focused movements to complete. You’ll be surprised how many of them you can come up with!

One example of a fine-motor task Oliver helps with is sorting his gummy vitamins. My kid’s each have a pill organizer with a different case for each day of the week. Once a week, I have them sort their vitamins into the different pill cases. They have to open the tiny cases, sort the small gummies, pinch the cases closed, and sort the cases back into the organizer in order. There’s a ton of different cognitive and fine motor skills included in this task! And my kids enjoy the feeling of independence that comes with it.

I first identified that Oliver needed to focus on his fine motor skills at the beginning of August. After about a week of struggling to complete the academic tasks I asked him to do, we switched gears and focused almost exclusively on fine motor development. By the beginning of September, Oliver could hold a pencil appropriately, though he had very low muscle tone and frequently reverted to holding a pencil with his whole palm. By October, he was picking up the pencil with the correct grip almost every time, and his strength had improved enough for him to trace shapes and letters. He even began drawing people and objects unprompted for the first time (before we started these interventions, all he could do was scribble). And just last week, Oliver colored in an entire picture, staying mostly in the lines, and leaving no large gaps uncolored. These may sound like small victories, but they are major improvement from where we started three months ago! And all it took was practicing fine motor activities that focused on his pincer grip.

If your child is struggling with appropriately holding a pencil or other fine motor tasks, there is hope! With a little effort and creativity, you can see some big improvements. But if, in spite of your efforts, you’re not seeing progress, don’t despair. Ask your pediatrician for a referral to an Occupational Therapist. They’ll do an evaluation and then determine if occupational therapy is necessary. If it is, don’t take that as a failure on your part. Kids all need extra help in different areas, and an OT is trained to assist with these kinds of struggles. Either way, you’ve gotten your child the help they need, and they’ll begin making significant strides forward.

I hope this post was helpful and gave you some good ideas for how to implement more fine motor skills into your daily routine and homeschool curriculum. I’d love to hear ways that you encourage your child’s fine motor development! Tell us about them in the comments!