School education, both primary and secondary, is focused on the child's fluency in writing, hatching and drawing skills. Graphomotor skills are understood as the ability to use writing objects and coordinate the actions of the working hand with mental actions. What is important here, first of all, is the accuracy of movements, their pace, as well as the child's ability to relatively easily reproduce the actions of an adult, that is, to act according to a given pattern.
The period of development of graphomotor skills begins in early childhood, and how much earlier it starts and how intensively it will proceed depends on how the child's education at school will develop.
Recent history of preschool and primary education
In Soviet times, the curriculum in preschool educational institutions (kindergartens) and elementary school focused on the development of graphomotor skills in preschoolers and youngerschoolchildren a lot of attention. One can even say that it was one of the priority accents of education. In kindergartens - both in the preparatory group and in the younger ones - educators in special classes taught children to hold the writing instrument correctly, take the correct posture when writing, taught them to work in lined notebooks, explaining what lines are and what margins are.
In addition, in any kindergarten, children were traditionally taught the accuracy of completing tasks, the repetition of performing the same action, the correct hatching, etc. Thus, the child turned out to be prepared for school both psychologically and physically: he imagined, what demands he might face, and the small muscles of the fingers were already somewhat prepared for further development.
In elementary school, the controlled development of graphomotor skills in children continued intensively as well. The program provided an opportunity for the primary school teacher to "put a hand" on the first grader, who performed numerous exercises in copybooks and workbooks, and the development of writing skills was a priority.
Modernity
Modern educational standards do not imply such intensive work on the formation of graphomotor skills in children. Despite its complexity and ornateness, preschool and elementary education pays very little attention to hand positioning. Yes, and at home, children's leisure quite often eliminates the need for the child to practice writing and writing.drawing, the reason for this is the permission of parents to play with a tablet, smartphone or computer.
Meanwhile, the elementary school program implies that the child should start learning already knowing the basics of writing, that is, a modern first-grader should develop graphomotor skills much more strongly than a Soviet one. At the same time, at the lessons in elementary school, much less attention is paid to the development of fine motor skills of the hands. Meanwhile, all further education, at least in the basic disciplines, is still based on dynamic writing.
One of the troubles of a modern student
The disharmony of the requirements for the child is obvious. On the one hand, the school curriculum has become much more complicated, and on the other hand, the program does not provide an opportunity to develop basic skills, which, apparently, are supposed to develop in some kind of background, by themselves. If we add to this that, as already mentioned, at home children write and draw much less than before, then the problems of most children are quite predictable.
Many first-graders do not cope with the program, fall behind the requirements, and therefore the success of all further education is a big question. And this is not an exaggeration of the problem: most modern teachers agree that, with an objective look at the modern student, the low level of his knowledge is obvious. Of course, the point here is not only in the competent development of graphomotor skills, but in the education system as a whole, however, the role of hand placement in no case should beunderestimate.
Parents' task
Thus, modern parents who do not want to let their child's education run by itself have an important, but with a responsible and competent approach, quite feasible and generally elementary task - the development of small muscles of the hands, the development of motor skills. Graphomotor skills can also be formed outside the walls of educational institutions, and, objectively speaking, they are formed much more successfully when they receive daily attention at home.
Basic conditions: regularity of classes and guidelines
The main mistakes that parents make are not in the field of methodology or strategy, but in the field of elementary discipline.
Firstly, tasks that form graphomotor skills in preschoolers should be given to the baby regularly and constantly, there should be time for them literally every day. This is the main condition for the hand to develop steadily, without jerks and excessive efforts that cause negative emotions in the whole family and can lead to the child's refusal to exercise.
When giving assignments, in no case throw away used albums and notebooks, they need to be stored, and not only for memory. They are very important in order to return to them and analyze how the child has progressed, whether he has progress. If he is, then this must be demonstrated to him. If there is no difference between the records with an interval of six months, then this is an occasion to think about whether adequate requirements are imposed on the child, whether there arehe has landmarks.
Demanding to the baby, providing him with guidelines, stimuli and samples - this is the second main condition for the formation of graphomotor skills and many others. The child must be well aware of what he is learning; what he already knows and what he needs to learn; what is easy for him, and what is given to him with great difficulty; when he does it well, and when he does it badly. Many parents prefer only to praise their child, believing that this is a good way to positive learning and the child's desire to learn. However, this is a big misconception. To hide from the baby that he is doing something badly, does not try, means to deceive him and stop his development, deprive him of the happiness of feeling that he has really learned something.
Zone of proximal development
To know what to praise a child for, what to demand from him and what tasks to offer, every adult must be aware of what immediate goals the child should achieve. If they are too far away, then the child will not be able to feel their reachability. If the tasks are too simple, then learning will not move forward. In pedagogy, there is the concept of "zone of proximal development" - this is the area of child development that is realistically achievable in the near future, but for which the child must make efforts.
In accordance with this concept, children develop graphomotor skills. An adult should set a goal for the child that is “visible” to both him and the teacher, and all tasks should be a little more difficult than those that the child performs without effort.
Development vector
Each child develops at his own pace, and in each family at different times there may be opportunities and needs to develop graphomotor skills in preschoolers. However, at whatever age the child's parents decide to develop him and whatever features he has, the stages and vector of development are essentially the same for everyone.
In classes, you need to move from large and thick objects to thin ones, from elementary tasks to more complex ones, from short lessons to long ones, from simplified requirements to more stringent ones.
Background and directed jobs
In essence, any games that involve controlled movements of the hand and fingers work to develop graphomotor skills. Now there are a lot of so-called educational toys that involve precise and subtle movements. Modeling, weaving, small designers, and mosaics are also very useful. However, the game and the listed activities are only a background and ground for the development of graphomotor skills proper.
As soon as possible, you should offer your child thick felt-tip pens or crayons to try out the tool. As a rule, if the baby is not given a specific task, his tests will consist in drawing indefinite stripes. This is a necessary step, but you should not linger on it for a long time. When he exhausts himself, you should show the child how tohold the writing subject, and gradually give simple and elementary tasks, moving him towards writing and drawing.
Quest types
You can start classes to develop specific writing skills with the following types of exercises:
1. Connecting two points with a line. It does not occur to many that even this child needs to be taught and that it is necessary to start as early as possible. How difficult this can be, everyone can test for themselves by trying to hold the pen with their toes (by the way, this exercise is also extremely useful for children). The child's hand, in terms of the degree of development of subtle and specific movements, is not much different from the foot of an adult.
Arrange the points so that the resulting line is either horizontal, or vertical, or diagonal. Don't let your baby turn the paper. As the child grows, make the task more difficult. Gradually, you will come to drawing by numbered dots and drawing complex patterns by cells, as well as graphic dictations.
2. Drawing on an incentive line (stroke). Draw any drawing with a dotted line or a very thin line and offer to circle it. This task will accompany the child until the end of mastering the letter, the last stage will be complex recipes, according to which the child will learn to write the letters of the alphabet of his native and foreign languages.
3. Hatching. The ability to draw lines in one direction, limited to a certain area and adjacent to each other, will teach the child to color and prepare for drawing with paints.
Do not forget that a person is the easiest to learn anything,if he is given the opportunity to observe how another person does it. Drawing and writing in the presence of a child, doing tasks in front of his eyes will greatly simplify the development of his graphomotor skills and ensure the success and dynamism of learning.
