Nowadays, old fashioned chalkboards are a thing of the past in schools. If you want your child to experience vertical writing and the feeling of chalky dust on their hands, you might want to get them their own chalkboard for kids.
However, nostalgia shouldn’t be the only reason for you to get your children their own chalkboard. Vertical writing provides many benefits for children. In this article we’ll discuss the benefits, and why it’s important that you encourage its practice at home to further your children’s gross motor skills!
Top 7 Benefits of Vertical Writing for Children
- It Promotes Shoulder and Elbow Stability
- It Improves Bilateral Coordination
Another great thing that’s improved by vertical writing is bilateral coordination.
It is the same as if you’ve ever tried to stencil something, and you know how difficult it can be. For children, tracing objects, using stencils or simply stabilising their paper to write are all challenging activities. These tasks require the use of both hands, so it’s essential to practice bilateral coordination. It will make two-handed tasks so much easier for them.
- It Improves Midline Crossing
When children write or draw on a large vertical surface, they need to cross the midline of their body with their dominant hand to reach the spaces they want to use. This is great, because it will allow them to practice and eventually master midline crossing, which will make their hand dominance stronger and more effective. Vertical writing encourages this perfectly!
- It Will Help with Wrist Extension and Pencil Grasp
Another great benefit gained from vertical writing is that it naturally puts your children’s wrist in an extended position. This encourages and improves hand stabilisation, which will allow them to grip the pencil easier and have more control over any writing utensils they use, from chalk to markers and everything in between.
- It Will Increase Visual Attention and Hand-Eye Coordination
Vertical writing increases visual attention and hand-eye coordination because what they’re doing is literally in front of their eyes. If your children have difficulty maintaining visual attention or their hand-eye coordination is off, vertical writing will help them tremendously.
- It Will Improve Spatial Awareness
When your children practice vertical writing, their spatial awareness improves drastically. This is because they have to work in different directions and make better use of the space so they can write everything they want. Plus, they’ll be able to relate their words to their own bodies.
- It Promotes Core Strength and Good Posture
Last but not least, vertical writing will improve your child’s posture and core strength. However, for this to happen, you need to guide them so that they don’t slump while they’re working on their chalkboard, and by paying attention to their posture you will be able to correct it from a young age.
Click here to find out more about the Chalk and Chalk Board range on offer from iKids.
