Handwriting exercises

Jordan's handwriting homework involves a lot of fun equipment. First he uses these chopsticks to move beads from place to place, using a careful thumb-and-index-finger grip. He likes to sort them into color groups, or stack them.

Then he uses stiff tongs to do the same thing. Pinch to grab the bead, lift up by bending the wrist back, and let go to set the bead down. These tongs are challenging even for me.

Next he is supposed to pull these linked beads apart with his fingertips. This is so difficult as to be a little maddening. Yanking them apart with your closed fist is not allowed.

From there we move on to the fun therapy putty. The first exercise is just to massage it around to warm it up, but only with the fingers, not with the palms or the tabletop. Next he makes it into a snake and pinches it hard between thumb and index finger, sequentially all along its length, three times.

The last strengthening exercise is to hold the putty in one hand and push the thumb down into it. This is also very tiring. Dale has learned that his thumb hardly bends that way at all.

Then he does a little writing. These are the "frog jump letters": you start on the green dot (the lily pad), go straight down (into the pond), then frog jump back up to the green dot for the next move. I notice that when Jordan is doing this exercise, he uses a proper pencil grip. (Then he goes right back to his usual grip when we're done, but that is to be expected.) 

I also quiz him on how to make the letters. These letters are made out of just four shapes of "legos": a long straight line, a short straight line, a big curved line, and a small curved line. I say, "How do you make a P?" and his job is to say, "Long straight line, frog jump, small curved line." A B is "long straight line, frog jump, two small curved lines."

This is all fun and takes ten minutes if we're snappy. Aaron does it too, why not?