The brain and body are connected, and children are suffering due to lack of playtime. Schools in Finland are implementing programs with occupational therapy, sensory toys and movement opportunities to help children develop their gross and fine motor skills, leading to improved hand-eye coordination, core muscle strength, attention and focus, and handwriting.
The most important idea is to track the progress of a child's performance levels over time, even if they don't use numbers and graphs. For example, a young 8-year-old boy in third grade had backward handwriting and could barely grip a pencil.
Movement and handwriting activities can stimulate the brain and body for higher learning, leading to improved retention of letters and sounds, letter formation, sentence structure and handwriting.