Commonly available pencils are improperly designed for normal children and some inadequate grasp which not only retard writing speed but also deform fingers’ and hand's fine motor muscles and cause pain at the joints. Some ergo-devices as attachment are available in the market, through they help a good number of children but children have a lot of diversity and are needed to be adapted for about 50 per cent of children.
For children with special needs, not only children are needed to improve their tripod grasp but also there is a need to customize the thickness of pencil to relax and shape fine motor motor muscles separately for each child. Therefore, improvisation and adaptations are must which could be done by the special educator as well as care-givers with readily available material for every child.
An experiment was done in which the pencil was wrapped with a folded paper strip to adjust the thickness and position as cylindrical tube so that both grip improves with relaxed muscle getting exercise while the child wrote Hindi alphabet successively.
The inset photo-story describes the steps or protocol for improving writing and acquiring adequate fine motor movements. The amount of wrapping is can be adjusted as per the individual needs of the child.
A pencil, thus can be made a therapeutic writing utensil with improvisation to mitigate Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSIs) and Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) of fingers and hand.
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