The pandemic may have forced children to start online classes and majorly replace their pens with keyboards, yet parents have expressed concerns that more than anything, handwriting & the ability to write effectively has been the casualty in all this process. Children have got so used to tapping keys and clicking a mouse, that they have completely neglected focusing on their formation of letters, legibility and speed of writing. So the Child for Child team decided to put together a webinar for children on Mastering Penmanship.
Mastering Penmanship is not just about improving handwriting, it is according to the trainer, beyond hand & writing. It is about revisiting one’s style of holding the pen, sitting at a study table, holding the notebook, writing with an angle and of course building the muscle in fingers to be able to write better & faster.
The session has some very interesting takeaways spread over multiple sessions of over an hour & a half. Some of them being:
- Understanding and Evaluating The 5 Elements TO A Scientific Handwriting
- How to choose the Right Pen especially for long writing hours
- Ergonomics of Writing – The Scientific Positioning of Pen, Body & Paper
- Finger Flexion Exercises – developing hand-mind coordination through handwriting
- Hand Yoga – improving muscle strength
Mr. Imran through the sessions keeps the children engaged with hand exercises, finger flexion activities and hand yoga before the beginning of any session. He then guides them through letter writing, cursive writing, crossing the ‘t’s and dotting the ‘i’s.
When children are timed for their speed & their ability to copy and write followed by their ability to listen & write, is when most of the children realised where their flaws arose from.
Over subsequent sessions that we have conducted with the help of handwriting Institute of India, students were guided through written assessments, handwriting evaluations and speed writing. They were explained differences between ‘writing while reading – copying’ & ‘writing while listening – dictation’.
There were moments where children seemed to slack off, & this was followed by an immediate reprimand from Imran Sir. While children may not be sitting in front of the trainer physically but with their videos on, they were monitored very strictly at every step of the way during the training sessions. Eventually it resulted in class that was alert and galvanized towards achieving the takeaways set before the commencement of the session.
All in all students not only learnt a completely new way of writing but also had a huge amount of fun. The hope is that they continue to practice and keep working on their penmanship. The next level of penmanship would be when they effectively use the skills acquired to think articulately, space their thoughts intelligently and put it all in writing in a wonderful way.
These sessions are organized for students across different schools from different cities as a part of Child for Child program’s Value Shop initiative. The aim is to reach out to children with activities that not only keep them busy during lockdown of schools but also keep them positively engaged. We believe that if children are engaged productively & effectively it will play a positive role in their mental wellbeing. The pandemic has left everyone in a quandary over the fate of schools & that of children who are unable to go to schools. Schools play a huge role in holistic development of children not only in academic fields but also hugely in non-academic persuasions. The duration of the time that schools have remained closed has wreaked havoc with the lifestyles of children who were used to a regimented life in school & out of it. Physical & mental wellbeing has taken a hard hit, and this was where CFC program stepped in with their value shop initiatives to keep children positively occupied with creative, intellectual and fun mobilizations.
To know more about CFC visit https://www.smilefoundationindia.org/childforchild.html
