Kati Berlin MS OTR/L, occupational therapist at the Pineville office of Child and Family Development, reviewed an interesting article about how writing by hand is good for your brain.  Being trained in Handwriting Without Tears, she was intrigued by the title.  The author conferred with Dr. Marc Seifer, a graphologist and handwriting expert who wrote The Definitive Book of Handwriting Analysis, about the benefits of taking a pen to paper and here is the abbreviated list: 

Writing by hand: 

1. has a calming effect
2. coordinates the left and right brain
3. boosts cognitive skills
4. inspires creativity
5. sharpens aging minds
6. improves memory
7. uses more of your brain

In particular, Kati agrees that writing things down impacts our memory. Especially for kinesthetic learners, one will retain more by writing than by simply typing. For her school aged clients, Kati proposes a balance between handwriting and typing.  Once you can master writing each letter without having to think much about formation, sizing, baseline, and spacing, writing is so much easier! That‚Äôs why we frequently recommend keyboarding as an accommodation to children with learning disabilities like dysgraphia and dyslexia.  Keyboarding removes the need to work on actual letter formation.  It lets the child think only about spelling and what they want to write, not how to write it.

Read full article here.