2B: Handwriting warm ups
Think about what happens when athletes are preparing for a sprint, or when footballers are about to play a match or when a ballet dancer is about to perform. What activity do they all do first? They do a warm up. They do this in order to warm up their muscles and to prepare their body to prevent injury and to perform to their full capacity.
It is the same with handwriting. We all need to warm up our muscles in order to write as well as we can and to be able to write for longer periods. This is especially important for young people who find handwriting a challenge.
Before you do any handwriting warm-ups with young people for the first time, why not:
- Get them to think of activities where you need to do a warm up
- Think about why warm ups are important
- Show a warm up that they might do before that activity
- Write a cartoon strip of a warm up sequence (for example, demonstrate a movement break and write a cartoon strip to break it down)
- Then explain how our hands need to do the same to work as well as they can when writing and to stop them getting as sore
Click the arrow to expand each one or click here to expand all of the examples below:
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Key Points
- As with any physical activity, warming up before writing can reduce strain and improve performance
- Learners can become easily bored of warm up sequences; so use variety and get them involved in creating moves and sequences
Thinking Points
- You can make these warm ups really fun and cross curricular by linking them to your class topic
Supportive Resources
- www.growinghandsonkids.com
- www.audio.lgfl.net – thousands of music tracks which can be searched by key word