Your baby has grown up, and it's time to go to school and learn writing skills. At first glance, there is nothing complicated or incomprehensible here, but a little person needs not only to learn to write, but also to comprehend the very technique of this process. To do this, you should know how to teach your child to hold a pen correctly so that writing becomes an easy and unburdensome task. This skill needs to be instilled from the very beginning of learning, because if the baby gets used to holding the pen incorrectly, it will be quite difficult to retrain him.

Correct posture

Start by teaching your child how to sit properly when writing. The back should be straight and rest on the back of the chair, the legs should be level, resting on the entire surface of the foot, on the floor. Both hands lie on the table in a comfortable position, elbows slightly extending beyond the edge of the tabletop. Make sure that the student's chest does not rest against the table - the optimal distance is 5-10 cm. The shoulders are relaxed and should not tense while writing. The table should be comfortable so that your elbows can slide freely when writing. The head is slightly tilted forward, the notebook is located at a distance of 20-30 cm from the eyes.

Teaching your child to hold a pen correctly and maintain the correct posture when writing is very important. The formation of writing technique, its speed and productivity depend on the first skills. The child will learn to write correctly without spoiling his posture.

Little tricks

It is very difficult for many children to get used to the position of their hand when the handle is clamped in it. But you can try playing a game with your baby. How to teach a child to hold a pen correctly using ordinary means? Take soft paper or a napkin. Crumple a small piece and place it under the child’s little finger and ask him to squeeze it. Give a pencil or pen in your hand. Make sure that the paper remains clamped in your palm. See how comfortable it is for the baby to hold the pen, which fingers are more tense, and how the hand lies on the table. This way, you will give him an idea of ​​how to handle a new item and not drop it. This game will tell you how to teach your child to hold a pen comfortably.

The main thing is calm

How to teach a child to hold a pen correctly without turning such a task into real torture? Explain everything to your child using your own example, while being patient and talking through every detail. Choose a handle that is not too long, but not short either - the optimal length is approximately 15 cm. It should be smooth and without edges, then it will be easier for the child to get used to it. Ask to bend the little finger and ring finger, and then press it to the palm. Place the handle on the flat middle finger, approximately in the middle, and then ask the child to press it with his thumb. The index finger should easily fix the handle on top, while remaining quite mobile and not straining.

The pen should be slightly tilted to the right. Ideally, its end should be directed towards the right shoulder, although this is not such a prerequisite. It is important to get used to this position; it helps relieve tension from the shoulders and neck. The working hand should rest on the edge or upper phalanx of the little finger. The pen must be held evenly in relation to the paper; the tilt is made by shifting the notebook at an angle of about 30 degrees. This position of the hand and the correct position of the body will show how to teach a child to hold a pen correctly.

Have you paid attention to how your child holds his hand? It's not about which hand he holds it in: his right or his left. The tilt of the pen, the position of the fingers, the position of the arms, elbows, legs, back - all this is important in order to learn how to write correctly, quickly and beautifully. But most importantly, it is necessary to be able to hold a pen correctly in order not to get tired even during long writing and, of course, not to spoil your posture.

How to hold a child’s hand correctly and how to teach him this correctly? This is easy to do if you show patience and a desire to help the baby in this matter. Shouting, punishment and endless comments made in a stern teacher's tone will not help here. Only kindness, attention and care for the child and everything connected with him will help you find the right path.

How to hold a pen correctly when writing: there are no small details

This is the initial stage of training. Let the child imagine that there is a soft pad on the middle finger of his hand. Ask him to place his hand on this pad as comfortably as possible. Let it be such an interesting game with a pen in the role main character. To make the pen even more comfortable, ask your child to hold it with his thumb and forefinger on both sides. At this time, pay attention to the distance between the tip of the pen and your index finger. It should be about 15–20 millimeters no more. Adjust this distance without the child noticing. To be sure, consider how to hold the pen correctly in the photo.

We sit down correctly

When the pen is correctly fixed in the hand, you can proceed to the next stage, which will be the correct position of the head and torso while writing. Explain to your child that you can only write with a straight back and legs tightly together. Make sure that the child does not lie down on the table while writing, does not tuck his legs under him, does not cross his legs, and especially does not write while standing. All this will negatively affect the way he holds the pen, and as a result, his posture and, of course, his handwriting itself.

The notebook should be positioned at an angle of 30 degrees while writing. This way, the child will not need to turn his body much or tilt his head in order to write at an angle. The bottom of the notebook page should be against the middle of your chest. The child's elbows should not hang over the table.

How to hold a pen correctly for a first grader: help in poetic form

At the very beginning of their education, in the first grade, children are trusting, inquisitive and well-educated. They still have kindergarten habits, one of which is repeating useful information in chorus. Therefore, it will be effective to memorize a small and simple rhyme that will help children learn to hold their pens correctly, get ready to work in a notebook, and reinforce the rules of behavior while writing. This verse goes like this:

Sit up straight, legs together, take the notebook at an angle. Left hand in place, right hand in place, You can start writing!

As a rule, children happily repeat this rhyme in chorus before each lesson, while the correct skills of preparing and behaving during writing are reinforced in their heads. You can repeat the poem for several months; the children will find it fun and interesting.

Let's start writing: from theory to practice

WITH preparatory stages everything is clear, let's proceed directly to the letter itself. When writing, it is important that the hand rests on the base of the wrist, the little finger and the outer part of the palm. As the hand moves across the page, make sure that the child carefully moves the palm, placing the main weight on the wrist. When a decent distance has been “traversed,” about a 10-letter word, the wrist can be smoothly moved a little.

It is very easy to check whether a child is holding a pen correctly or not. It will be enough to ask him to raise his index finger. If everything was done correctly, then even after this the handle will not fall. Make sure that the child does not squeeze his fingers too much while holding the pen. It should be in a relatively free hand. Excessive tension will be indicated by bending the joint of the index finger while writing. Such tension will lead to premature fatigue and slow down the pace of writing.

The length of the handle should be no more than 15 centimeters. This is important because a pen that is too short or too long will hinder your child's ability to learn proper writing skills.

When teaching your child how to hold a pen correctly when writing, draw his attention to how you hold the pen. Talk about the fact that your fingers are uncomfortable to operate the handle in the wrong position. You can play with preschoolers interesting game: on each finger involved in the process, draw the face of an animal, and then practice placing each of them at a certain level.

Good exercise to train a child before writing is as follows. Place a sharpened pencil perpendicular to the child’s body, using a pencil lead. Ask your child to pinch the pencil by the non-sharp end so that the fingers gently move down the body, while the sharp end of the pencil rests on a sheet of paper.

A pen for a left-hander and how to properly hold a pen with your left hand?

Incorrect finger position when left-handed writing will lead to rapid fatigue of the child and deterioration of his handwriting. The technique for teaching left-handed people how to hold a pen is no different from the technique for right-handed people, except that everything will need to be done in a mirror image. The main thing is to control how a left-handed child holds a pen and choose a special pen for him. It should not be too thick, the paste should not smear, otherwise it will be impossible to achieve accuracy. You can also buy special self-taught pens for left-handers.

Advice: Whatever your child’s successes, praise him and try to take an active part in his accomplishments. homework. Thus, it will be possible not only to strengthen the emotional union with the child, but also to monitor how correctly he writes and holds the pen, eliminating shortcomings in the process in a timely manner.

How to teach a child to hold a pen correctly

Not all children know how to hold a pen or pencil correctly.

1. So, imagine that on the middle finger of our right hand we have an invisible pad

It is on this pad that we place the pen:

Now the index finger and thumb grab the handle from above:



Distance X from the very tip of the pen to the tip of the index finger should be approximately 1.5 cm. If the distance is very small or large, the hand will be tense while writing.

2. using a napkin

To teach your child how to hold a pen correctly In this way, you will need, in fact, the pen itself and... a napkin.

We fold the napkin several times and hold it with two fingers of the right hand - the little finger and the ring finger, the remaining fingers are straightened.

Now, with our free fingers, we take the pen in our right hand and, lo and behold, the child holds it correctly!

Despite the fact that it is very simple, this method is nevertheless the most effective.

3. dart analogy

Surely, each of us has played darts at least once in our lives, where you need to hit the target with a dart. So, in order for the dart to fly where it should, it must be held in your hand with three fingers. When your child picks up a pen or pencil, remind him or her to hold it or him like a dart.

4. pen - “self-taught”

This is a device that fits onto the handle. Thanks to him, it is simply impossible to grasp the pen incorrectly. In addition, you can find similar attachments in various colors and in the shape of animals. I ordered a similar exercise machine for left-handed people, as it is correctly called, from an online store; if anyone is interested, I’ll tell you the address. These simulators can be found for both right-handers and left-handers.

By the way, for kids who are just learning to hold a spoon in their hands, there is a special training spoon, thanks to which your child can learn to correctly hold cutlery in their hand.

5. handle of the Stabilо LeftRight series with a “tip” for fingers

Stabilo LeftRight series products were developed jointly with specialists in medicine, education and ergonomics.

The handle of this series has a triangular shape, the body is made of soft material, the weight and length of the handle are reduced. Also on the body of the handle there are recesses of a certain size. All this ensures the correct position of the pen in the child’s hand, and bright colors and cheerful design create a positive attitude towards learning.

The developers of the Stabilо LeftRight series offer stationery for both right-handers and left-handers.

6. tweezer grip method

To do this, take a pencil or pen by the very tip and place it on the table.

Now the fingers move downwards with sliding movements and the handle is in the hand in the correct position.

Now all that remains is to control the tilt of the child’s hand.

7 . game “ Good night, pen!"

This method is suitable for the youngest clerks. You can offer the baby to “put” a pen or pencil to sleep in the child’s hand: put the pen in the crib on the middle finger, the index finger under the head, and the thumb on top of the blanket.

8. Using crayons

Teaching a child to draw usually begins with crayons. If you take pastel crayons and break them into pieces about 3 cm long, and then invite your child to draw with them, this will give just the desired effect. Short pieces cannot be grasped with a fist, so the baby will gradually learn to grasp the chalk with three fingers, as we need, and in the future he will not have problems getting acquainted with the pen.

How to sit at the table correctly

When writing, it is important to follow the following rules:

• sit at the table with a straight back;
• place your feet together on the floor or stand;
• both elbows should be on the table;
• the distance between the edge of the table and the chest is about 2 cm;
• the sheet of paper should be positioned at an angle of 30 degrees so that the lower left corner is oriented towards the middle of the chest.

10.02.2011

The sticks fall on their side, the hooks don’t obey, and the letters look completely unhealthy - a common situation in primary school. And if, on top of everything else, the child cannot cope with lacing his shoes, it becomes clear that he needs to work and work on his fine motor skills.

To master the skill of writing (and it is quite complex: it requires the development of the corresponding parts of the brain, voluntary attention, good coordination of movements and developed small muscles of the hand), long and daily training is required. But this does not mean that you need to put the unfortunate child in writing and not let him out until the handwriting becomes calligraphic. There are a lot of more pleasant and humane ways to train your hands, and at the same time make your child smarter - after all, it has long been no secret that fine motor skills of the fingers contribute to brain development.

If in preschool childhood development fine motor skills We didn’t do much, so don’t be upset. It’s better to do something together with your child:

1. Drawing. The more a child draws, the better. You just need to draw with pencils or paints. Pens and markers, so beloved by kids, are completely unsuitable. The fact is that when drawing with a pencil, the child can independently adjust the degree of pressure and get a light or bold line. But felt-tip pens always write the same way and you don’t need to make any effort to draw with them.

2. Coloring books. They train the eye and hand, developing voluntary attention and accuracy. A good exercise for developing writing is shading. You need to shade a drawing or portrait in a newspaper in one direction, maintaining the same distance between the strokes. You can take stencils, outline the child’s arms and legs, and then shade them.

3. Solving puzzles and dictations. Many children's magazines have tasks - connect the dots by numbers, find a way in a maze, write a secret word according to a model and read the answer in the mirror, etc. You can do all this yourself.

Conduct a dictation, which will also reinforce the concepts of “left” and “right”. Take a piece of paper in a box, draw a dot on it - this is the beginning of the path. The child holds a pencil on it, you command: “left, straight 3 squares, right, straight 2 squares, left...”. As a result, a figure should be obtained, treasures should be found, or simply displayed difficult path pencil. Or organize the good old " sea ​​battle", "Tic Tac Toe" and other games that you used to brighten up your least favorite lessons.

4. Sculpted. What it will be - plasticine, clay, dough, in essence, it doesn’t matter. What to sculpt - too. The main thing is that the child can crush the plasticine, tear off pieces from it, connect them together, etc. – this trains the fingers.

5. Appliqués and origami. Folding an airplane, hand-gluing a postcard for grandma - all this involves fine motor skills of the fingers.

6. By cutting. Don’t be afraid to give your child scissors: let him cut the tablecloth, but learn how to cut out circles, napkins and New Year’s snowflakes.

7. Design. Moreover, anything, anything! The main thing is that you both find it interesting. You can build a tower from matches or assemble a purchased wooden excavator, or glue cardboard model ship. Gluing and assembling small parts is not only a training for the hands and eyes, but also for developing perseverance.

8. Mosaic. As a rule, 6-7 year old children are no longer interested in this little fun. But picking, for example, a flower according to a pattern at speed already looks attractive. Or you can arrange a competition with friends, family championship by mosaic.

9. Beading, stringing beads. When working with small elements, make sure that the child does not swallow them and does not think of putting the beads in his nose or ear.

10. Embroidery. For kids, special sets are sold with fairly thick needles and comfortable hoops. Embroidery is an excellent exercise for developing fingers and the eye. Just make sure that the child embroiders in daylight and for no more than half an hour a day.

11. Laces. Now there are many ready-made manuals - some imitate buttons and shoes, others offer to decorate a Christmas tree by tying plastic toys to it, etc. But there is nothing difficult about making such a guide yourself: just take a sheet of cardboard, draw, for example, an apple on it and make holes. Call the string a “worm” and “feed” it an “apple.”

12. Copying ornaments. Take your favorite pattern from a book or print it from the Internet. Place tracing paper on top and ask your child to trace the pattern with a pencil. You can copy your favorite cartoon characters in the same way. And then color and shade them, cut and paste them - I’m sure the child’s imagination will tell you what to do next.

Self-care skills are also important: by the age of 7, a child should be able to button and unbutton buttons, buttons, fasteners, at least tie shoelaces, and use cutlery correctly. By the way, it would be a good idea to teach your baby to eat with chopsticks.

And finally, do not protect your child from housework - washing dishes, washing the floor, wiping dust, sewing on buttons, replanting flowers - all this is good for developing the hands, and therefore the child’s brain.

Elena Andreeva

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Teaching to write is more difficult than teaching to read.

Let me make a reservation right away: by the ability to write, I do not mean adding individual words from Zaitsev’s cubes. We are talking, firstly, about developing fast, beautiful, legible and literate handwriting, and secondly, about computer typing using the ten-finger touch method. I deliberately used an unusual phrase here - “literate handwriting” - in order to emphasize that literacy is not theoretical knowledge, but a motor skill that should be instilled not in the head, but in the hand. But we will have the opportunity to talk about literacy in more detail, but now there is another question on the agenda: “Who, anyway, should teach our children to write?”

Let’s first look at what the currently fashionable techniques can offer us. early development?

It turns out, absolutely nothing. Lena Danilova, one of the leading experts in the field of early development, writes the following on this matter.

It has been noticed that children who learned to write early, when they get to school, write disgustingly. Teachers primary classes from year to year they tell parents not to engage their children in writing preschool age. And in this, unfortunately, they are right.
Children who have studied at early age writing, quickly spoil the handwriting due to the fact that the hand has not yet stabilized. Even if the letters turn out beautiful from the very beginning, it is impossible to consolidate good handwriting as a skill due to the unrealistic nature of daily intensive training with a child.

Teaching a child to write is very easy. You can teach writing at three, four, or five. But forcing a three- to four-year-old child to write for an hour a day, carefully monitoring the correct image of each element of the letters, is not only pointless, but also cruel. There is no other way to achieve good handwriting. Child having learned written alphabet, begins to use it at his own discretion. It is no longer possible to stop or control this process. He writes whatever he wants and, of course, anyhow. Handwriting, even if it was quite passable at the time of learning, quickly deteriorates and it is in this form that it becomes fixed as a skill.

To be honest, I did not expect such a frankly self-exposing confession from Lena Danilova. After all, it is stated here almost in plain text: “The sphere of early development includes only what a child can learn through play, without effort. And everything that requires persistent, systematic work from him is within the exclusive competence of the school.”

Well, okay: let's take a look at the school. How is writing taught there?

It should be noted that school methods for teaching writing have changed dramatically over the past half century. In the old days they wrote with a feather or fountain pen, and junior schoolchildren As a rule, they used the cheapest writing instruments of very poor quality. If you hold a bad fountain pen incorrectly, it simply does not write and, moreover, quickly breaks. Therefore, school teachers, willy-nilly, had to monitor the correct positioning of each student’s hand. The process of learning to write was long. He occupied the entire period primary school(three years), and until the children learned to write more or less passably, they were not too bothered with the rules of spelling.

Capital letters from school copybooks were written more beautifully back then, but much more difficult. And the copybooks themselves were arranged differently. It was assumed that one copy book should serve different students for several years, so only samples for copying were given there, and writing should not be practiced in it, but in a separate notebook. The notebooks for the first grade were also different - they had a thin, oblique ruler, which made it very easy to write letters, serving as an additional “support” for them.

Since then, the quality of writing materials and the quality of school teaching have changed significantly. The first is in better side, the second - for the worse. Now unpretentious ballpoint pens are in use, and teachers do not need to position their students' hands correctly. After switching to simplified writing of letters, it became possible to significantly reduce the time required to master calligraphy. Nowadays, first-graders are starting to write dictations and cram spelling rules.

As for modern copybooks, then they deserve a more extensive comment. All the absurdity of the school system was fully embodied in them. That's what I mean.

As you know, in school the curriculum rules the roost. For example, in the mathematics curriculum on the topic “multiplication by single digit number» a certain number of academic hours are allocated. A student who has mastered this topic within the allotted time receives an A. A student who does not meet the allotted deadline receives a bad mark. But both of them then move on to new topic- “multiplying by a multi-digit number.”

The same pedagogical principle now underlies the copybooks for first-graders. Here, for example, is a sample of writing the letter “a”, and then there are three empty lined lines so that the child can practice writing his own letter “a”. Regardless of whether the child has learned to write the letter “a” or not, as soon as the three lines end, he then moves on to the letter “b”.

Probably, today's school methodologists believe that children are some kind of especially conscious species of people. When the child notices that he has only three lines, he will, of course, write out the letter “a” with increased diligence - in order to have time to develop the corresponding motor skill while there is still free space left.

In this case, school methodologists know child psychology poorly. A normal, mentally healthy child will do exactly the opposite. If he has received the task of writing three lines with the letter “a”, then he will do it not with maximum diligence, but with maximum speed. No matter how creepy his scribbles may look, he will no longer be forced to redo shoddily completed work - there is simply physically no room for this in his copybooks. Well, just think, the next day the teacher will say “ah-ah-ah” and shake her head. But now you can watch TV longer.

It is interesting to note that in the first grade of school they no longer give grades. Bad grades for bad handwriting students begin to receive only in the second grade, when all the copybook lessons are already far behind them.

So, having quickly filled in the empty lines in the copybooks, the children move on to studying spelling patterns.

Hm... hm... Noble reader! Do you know what a spelling is? I first came across this word when I took my eldest son to first grade and looked into his textbooks to ask what he was doing there. It turns out that this is the central concept around which the study of the Russian language in modern schools has revolved for many years. I then began to ask all my friends if they knew what an orthogram was. No, no one knew. Then I turned to dictionaries. Sometimes the meaning of some unfamiliar Russian word is easiest to understand if you look at its translation into some foreign language. So, if you turn, for example, to the Yandex dictionary, then in its English, German, French, Italian and Spanish parts the combination of letters “spelling” is perceived as a typo. And in the Russian part, this word is found only in a single source - in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. The following is written here.

Spelling (from Greek orthós - correct and grámma - letter)

1) a consistently reproducible method of conveying in writing a phonomorphological phenomenon in a particular language (...);
2) Writing that complies with spelling rules.

We must give justice to school methodologists: they instill in first-graders not the first of these definitions, but the second. So, in A.V. Polyakova’s textbook for 1st grade of elementary school we read:

Spelling is the writing of words according to certain rules. capital letter in first names, patronymics and surnames of people - this is a spelling pattern.

Who understands what a spelling is, raise your hand! I certainly won't raise my hands. Probably it’s all to do with my mathematical education. I automatically do the substitution and get:

A capital letter in people's first, middle and last names is the spelling of a word according to certain rules.

There is no more logic in this phrase than, for example, in this:

A staircase between two floors means building a house according to certain rules.

Of course, some meaning is intuitively guessed here, but what sloppiness of thought! what disrespect for the Russian language! IN colloquial speech Such blunders are, perhaps, still acceptable, but the textbook for first grade could have been written more correctly.
So, as soon as the empty lines in the copybooks end, calligraphy is considered a completed stage, and first-graders begin to master spelling. They are trained to find spelling patterns in words. For example, a child writes from dictation: “Masha has a notebook.” According to the school methodologists, he should say to himself: “Masha is the name of a person. This means that it is written with a capital letter, because the capital letter in people's names is a spelling. At the end of Masha there should be a letter and, because the letter and in the letter combinations zhi, shi is an orthogram. The letter e in the word notebook is an unstressed vowel. This means that this is also a spelling. It is impossible to find a test word here. Such cases should be checked in a dictionary and memorized. At the end of the word notebook you hear th, but you have to write d, because you can pick up a test word - notebooks - and this is again an orthogram.”
Where can one keep an eye on the beauty of handwriting!

In short, the gloomy scenario with which Lena Danilova scares parents of preschool children is fully realized at school. There are, however, two minor differences. Firstly, Lena Danilova suggests that at least initially, preschoolers’ letters still turn out beautiful, but we cannot say the same about schoolchildren. Secondly, according to Lena Danilova, preschoolers begin to write whatever and however they like, realizing their own unbridled fantasies, while schoolchildren have to write under the strict supervision of teachers, bringing to life the wretched fantasies of methodologists.

No, I don’t want to indiscriminately criticize all the schools and all the teachers. Surely, in our vast expanses there is a teacher who really teaches how to write beautifully and competently. However, unfortunately, I can’t seriously count on the fact that my child will end up with him.

How to hold a pen correctly when writing

(if the child is right-handed)?

I start teaching my children to write about a year before they start school. I want them to be able to spell letters with some confidence by the time they hear the word spelling for the first time.

I sit the child down at the table, hand him a pen and... This is where the first difficulties begin. How, exactly, should you hold this pen correctly?
I belong to the first generation of people who were allowed to use ballpoint pens at school, and no one cared about my hand positioning. My parents, looking at how I scribbled, just shook their heads and wondered: “What a fool you are holding your pen! The opposite end of the handle should point towards the right shoulder, and he’s looking at you, I don’t understand where! Does the teacher really allow you to write like that?”

I tried a couple of times to turn the handle so that its opposite end was facing my right shoulder, but it seemed so inconvenient to me that I immediately abandoned this idea.

Many years later, when I began teaching my eldest son Denis, the bewildered exclamations of my parents somehow disappeared from my mind. I considered myself a great expert in writing. I have written more than one kilogram of paper in my life, and my handwriting is the subject of my special pride. I showed Denis how I hold a pen myself and gave him instructions to hold the pen in the same way.

Not so!

The proportions of a child's hand are not the same as those of an adult, and Denis, in principle, could not hold a pen the same way as me. With little effort, we achieved something acceptable, and this hand position was accepted as a mandatory standard. In the first grades, Denis amazed everyone with the beauty of the letters he wrote, and then... then we moved to Germany for several years. It is not for nothing that German schools are considered the worst in Europe.

German schools strictly regulate what writing materials students must use. For the first two years, schoolchildren write with a pencil, and for the remaining eleven years of study, they must write with a fountain pen. After finishing school, no one ever uses a fountain pen.

The German teacher Frau Schmidt, marveling at the beauty of Denisa’s handwriting, made me buy for him fountain pen (in German - füller), and from then on his handwriting began to rapidly deteriorate. With my usual meticulousness, I began to figure out what was going on.

I then made the first attempt in my life to write with a fountain pen. I bought the cheapest fuller for my experiments, and in my hands it simply refused to write. I borrowed a pen from Denis - and things didn’t go any better. Although Denisin's fuller was not cheap, within a month the child managed to render it almost completely unusable: the feather was folded to one side and its tip was forked.

Now it’s time to remember the old rule: the other end of the pen should point towards the right shoulder. If I held my cheap fuller this way, it actually began to write. In this position, the pen is strongly inclined towards the paper, and the main (vertical) lines of the letters are drawn parallel to the slot on the nib. I press on the spherical knob at the tip, this causes the two halves of the pen to move slightly apart, the slot becomes wider, and the ink flows safely through it onto the paper.
If you hold the fuller in the manner of a ballpoint pen - upright, so that the reverse end is slightly inclined to the right - then the main lines of the letters have to be drawn perpendicular to the slot on the nib. This causes the slot to clamp and prevent the ink from flowing onto the paper.

Didn't Frau Schmidt explain to you how to hold the fuller correctly? - I asked Denis.
- No.
- Can't be! After all, if you hold him wrong, he won’t write at all!
- If you press harder, it writes.
I took the fuller from Denis and gave him instead what he used to write with before - a capillary pen ( thin felt-tip pen, in German - Filz). Frau Schmidt called me to school.
- Is it true that you do not allow Denis to write in fuller? It won't work that way. We cannot write in felt. All our children write in fuller! - she said threateningly.
- Is it true that you didn’t show them how to hold a fuller? - I answered.
- What is there to show here: the fuller must be held in exactly the same way as a pencil.
I asked her to demonstrate what she thought was correct hand placement. Of course, there was no fuller in her purse. She took out the felt and scribbled a couple of unintelligible words with it. She held it upright, with a slight tilt to the right - exactly as I was used to holding a ballpoint pen.
- And you think that the fuller is held in exactly the same way?
- Certainly.
- Then I have no more questions. But I won’t give the fuller to Denis. Let him write in felt.
- But you can’t do that! You will talk to the rector! If he allows it, then you can write whatever you want. I must fulfill my teaching duty.

Soon I was summoned to the rector of the school, Herr Ezel. I wanted to prepare for this meeting with all responsibility. I began to look for information about the correct position of the hand when writing. I thoroughly rummaged through the German and Russian-language Internet, but found nothing. A huge number of web pages are devoted to how left-handed people should hold a pen, but right-handed people are not even mentioned. I went to the library and looked through many books on calligraphy and shorthand. And again: about hand positioning - not a word. I had to base my argument not on authoritative sources, but on logic and common sense.

“We are experienced teachers,” said Herr Rector Ezel, twirling the filtz in his hands. - We know better what is best. Many studies have been conducted and they all show that beautiful handwriting can only be worked out with the help of a fuller.

How wonderful! - I answered. - I’ve been very interested in this topic lately. Please give me a link to at least one such study.

We are experienced teachers. You must trust us. If we say so, then it is so. You don't need to ask us for any links.

Then inspiration struck me and I made a whole speech:

You know, Herr Rector, I also recently conducted an interesting study. I learned to write with a fuller in the “classical” style - the way my mom and dad once taught me: so that the other end of the pen points to my right shoulder. Until now, I have been writing all my life in the “modern” style - the way you and Frau Schmit do it and the way the majority of humanity writes now. “Modern” is good for modern writing instruments - ballpoint pens, rollerballs, felters, markers. These pens write best when positioned pointing towards the paper. In practice, you have to tilt them slightly to the right in order to see the tip you are writing with.

But the Art Nouveau style has one very serious drawback. The fact is that the hand rests on the outer edge of the palm and the bent little finger. It's the little finger that causes problems. When writing, the little finger does not stand still, but reflexively repeats the movements of the other fingers. At the same time, it rubs against the table, and a huge amount of energy is spent on this friction. The hand gets tired quickly. Once you write down a page, it feels like your hand is about to fall off.

You, Herr Rector, have to sign a lot of papers. You probably know this effect. If you sign at the bottom of a document and do not place an additional sheet of paper under your hand, your hand will simply stick to the table. It turns out that signing is not so easy, especially in hot weather when your hands are sweaty.

And one more small detail. You, Herr Rector, were once a student yourself. Did you have a pen dent on your middle finger at that time due to writing for a long time? Surely it was!

And a couple of days ago I tried to write in “classics”. You know, it feels as if I had been riding a bicycle along a sandy path for a long, long time and finally reached the asphalt. I felt real relief. The hand rests on the wrist and on the handle itself, the other end of the handle looks into the shoulder, the little finger hangs in the air and does not rub against anything. Well, except that its very tip lightly touches the paper. This style of writing requires almost no mechanical effort. You can write like this for as long as you like without your hand getting tired. And there are no dents on the middle finger, because the pen presses not on the finger, but on the paper.

“Classic” is ideal for fuller, but bad for felt because the pen is too inclined towards the paper. Oddly enough, “classic” is quite suitable for ballpoint pens and for all their modern varieties. In an inclined position, these pens write only slightly worse than when upright. Of course, if you overdo it with the tilt, the ballpoint pen stops writing altogether, but such a super-tilt is not required in the “classic”.

I think, Herr Rector, that your German system of school teaching was very reasonable from the very beginning. “Classics” is difficult for first-graders. It is very uncomfortable to hold a hand with child proportions so that it rests only on the wrist. Therefore, the children were given a pencil and allowed to write “modern” at first. When they grew up, the pencil was replaced with a fuller and retrained in the “classics”. Actually, there’s nothing special to retrain here: you just need to turn your hand a little in the forearm, and everything else falls into place automatically.

This is probably what was written down in your ancient instructions: starting from such and such an age, schoolchildren must write in fuller. Here, of course, it was not the fuller itself that was important. It was understood that children were switching to the “classics”. "Classic" - exclusively useful thing for everyone who has to write a lot, and, first of all, for high school students and students.

But here's what's interesting. I recently came across an advertisement for the Pelican company. They produce fuller, which is designed specifically for schoolchildren. In their advertising, they proudly emphasize that their fuller writes perfectly in any position. But if so, then why retrain a child for the “classics”? Let's give him a Pelican fuller - and let him write at random! It is not surprising that the entire meaning of the ancient instructions has now been completely forgotten, only one pro forma remains.

So what are you outraged about? - Frau Schmidt, who was also present at this meeting, entered the conversation. - For God’s sake, let Denis write in this very “classic”. I personally don’t care how he holds the pen. The main thing is that he writes in fuller. There must be order in everything.
- Who will teach him to write “classics”?
- So you teach. You understand everything so well.
“All I do is teach my children what they are not taught at school.” I will definitely teach Denis the “classics”. But only I will do it when I consider it necessary. For example, during the summer holidays, and not now, in the middle of the school year. You won’t relieve him of all written work during our studies. So let him pee in felt for now.
“We are experienced teachers,” said Herr Ezel. - And there should be order in everything.
“Do I understand you correctly, Herr Rector,” I asked, “that you will be forced to expel Denis from school if I do not give him a fuller?”
This question seemed to frighten Herr Ezel. He waved his hands desperately:
- No, no, of course not! This is not what this is all about!
And after a pause:
- So you say that you live here in Germany only temporarily.
- That's right.
- And when are you leaving back to Russia?
- Next year.
- OK. Frau Schmidt, as an exception, let him write in filtz.
- But Herr Ezel! And the teacher's duty! And order! In everything...
- Shhh! Frau Schmidt, you explain it to everyone this way: he is leaving for Russia, and only for this reason, as an exception...
I am very grateful to Frau Schmidt and Herr Ezel. If it weren't for their love of order, I would never have understood all the intricacies of writing in different styles.

I have now taken the “ancient German instructions” as a basis. At first, my children learn to write in a “modern” style. Only I give them not a pencil, but a felt pen - that is, sorry, a capillary pen. The pencil leaves too pale marks on the paper and also gets dull quickly. It must be constantly sharpened, and if you entrust this process to a child, then the waste - shavings and graphite dust - will then be evenly distributed throughout the floor. I don't like ballpoint pens either. They also write too pale, with disgusting veins, and provoke one to press on them with all one’s might. Of the capillary pens, although not very original, I prefer Stabilo point 88. I like this pen because it is thin, light and leaves a bright mark on the paper with almost no pressure.

The capillary pen is also good because it makes it easy to identify excessive hand tension. Children tend to have a death grip on the handle. Sometimes you touch their hand and it seems as hard as steel. This may not be noticeable to the eye. But if a child writes with a capillary pen, then if the pressure is too strong, the lines will turn out to be very thick, and the tip of the pen will quickly become worn out. Having such excellent feedback, the child begins to ensure that the hand remains relaxed at all times.

It should be noted that domestically produced school notebooks, as a rule, are not intended for writing with a capillary pen. They are made from such poor paper that the “capillary” ink smears on it, like on a blotter. Luckily, homeschooling doesn't require worksheets.

The capillary pen and “modern” remain “assigned” to the Cyrillic alphabet. When the time comes to master the Latin alphabet, I hand the child a fountain pen and introduce him to the “classics.” At the same time, the entire learning process is carried out as if all over again, so there is no need to even relearn.