Handwriting and typewriting, are important for a child’s learning and development. How do they correlate to the growth of a child? Let’s find out.
Recently, child guardians have failed to provide the necessary monitoring and patience to teach children proper typing posture and finger placement/movement. Children are taught at a young age to build their physical and mental muscles through a variety of activities.
The results of these exercises assist the child to develop the capacity for the next level of performance. Handwriting is one of the accomplishments that children strive for as they develop their fine motor skills, and having strong handwriting is extremely beneficial to children for a variety of reasons.
Read this article to the conclusion to learn the importance of handwriting and typewriting for children.
Benefits of proper handwriting for children
Development of eye, mind, and hand coordination
The process of forming letters correctly and consistently by a child involves seeing a picture of the desired letter and trying to replicate that letter in the nicest possible way. You find children writing, and erasing letters or words to correct by themselves only because the letters written did not come out well or the letters of the word, as we say, are not sitting nicely on the line.
Children begin to create mental images (in the mind) of how they want their words to look, they coordinate their hands to form what’s in their mind and their eyes vet the outcome. Developing coordination of these senses by age 5-6 is paramount and beneficial for use in other aspects of life.
Development of independence in achieving tasks
Teachers and parents have so much to teach children. 99% of the time, the children must have the opportunity to execute/practice on their own. This gives them a sense of independence and the fortitude that they can go at it alone.
Development of coordination between thought and expression
Children are advised to process their thoughts mentally or out loud before they express them in writing. This is not always the case especially as they begin to experience speed drills in school and among friends. Writing by hand slows them down just enough to achieve clarity and accuracy while expressing their ideas in the expected time frame.
READ: The Different Stages of the Human Brain Development
Development of functional brain activities
Research carried out by Karin H. James, and Laura Engelhard showed evidence of brain development during handwriting vs typewriting. In the research, “preliterate, five-year-old children printed, typed, or traced letters and shapes, then were shown images of these stimuli while undergoing functional MRI scanning.
Therefore, these findings demonstrate that handwriting is important for the early recruitment in letter processing of brain regions known to underlie successful reading.
Development of cognitive processes
It also helps a child’s memory retention, comprehension, and information processing.
Definition of their personality
With practice corrections and tweaks during handwriting activities, children build a sense of self through mental notes of how their writing comes out, what they like about it, and what they’d like to change. Over time, they see that they cannot help further changes and they stick to the latest result.
Typewriting for children
With innovation and future workplace readiness in mind, typewriting has become an increasingly in-demand need and gaining priority in conversations as a skill that children need to learn earlier than later in schools and homes. As important as this skill is for older children, we passively direct the children at it without getting them to learn the discipline that it promotes, as listed below
- Right body posture.
- Mental speed that comes with correct use of finger placement.
- Multitasking – their ability to read type and correct all at the same time.
- Boost of confidence in the use of digital tools and technology.
- Preparing children for higher efficiency in future work life.
- Efficiency in digital communication.
- Learning lifelong skills.
READ: Things You Need to Know When Choosing a School for Your Child
Conclusion
In light of this and the future that you are preparing the kids for, parents and educators need to make a deliberate effort to guarantee a smooth transition from teaching handwriting to teaching typewriting. This can be executed in a smooth manner as an expectation for a specific age or as a promotion of study spaces where students switch from pencil to pen to devices for taking notes.
