These were recommended by my daughter's preschool teacher to help her hold her pencil correctly. They have worked really well. She specifically recommended them because the part at the top prevents the child from fisting the pencil.

I bought these for our son, who is five and has a host of developmental delays. His fine motor skills are especially hard hit, and this is something I purchased to see if it might help him grip a crayon better. So the good news is that you can get this on a crayon. The bad news? You totally may break it in the process, but at least this holds the two ends together firmly enough that it doesn't seem to wobble ;) All joking aside, I had to use a lot of pressure to ease this onto the crayon, and I can see where it cracked inside the gripper.

Anyways, he hates these. Totally, totally hates these, has thrown me several expressions of complete and total disdain that have been termed "the Potty Scotty" face in this house (because it's the look he gave that doll right out of the box), when approached with using a crayon with this gripper, and is finding them awkward as of right now to use. Finally yesterday I was able to get him to hold it correctly for about 3 seconds. He drew a line, gave me the stink eye, and flounced off. I actually think he's doing better with the crayon alone at the moment, but he's not actually holding the crayon in the correct position either, so there's a part of me that thinks this is still worth trying for a little while because I think it could help him get the correct hand position quicker, because I think it tends to be easier to grip wider things for kiddos with fine motor challenges or developing fine motor skills. Generally. So we're still going to be trying with these for a bit more, but I can see how these would be more effective for a larger hand.

Because he's non-verbal, and isn't in a place communication wise where he's willing to do anything more then hit his "I don't like it" or "I don't want" button on his computer about it, I asked my daughter who's nearly 11 to try these out and give me some feedback, and she says it feels a bit awkward to use.

So my final verdict on these is that they may be helpful, but they could be more awkward for smaller hands, I don't think they're harmful, and I like that they are soft without having a tacky feel to them. Because if they'd been tacky, I don't think he'd have been willing to use them at all at this point.

My Kindergartner had a weird thumb wrap in her pencil grasp. She knew what a proper finger placement looked like, and could show me, but her "go to" was the weird grasp that she had developed. Just a few months of using these pencil grips, and she the weird thumb thing has almost entirely gone away. Thank you!

I really like these. We've been using them daily for about two weeks, and both children have improved their handwriting. They fit both fat pencils and regular sized. I even put them on a couple regular sized crayons (gently, I did snap one crayon in half during the attempt). I feel they do make it a bit hard to see over them as they are much larger than a grip that does not go over the fingers. I think for this reason we will use them for a couple more weeks to get that muscle memory built then take them off.

Update 5/23/16- I noticed after a while that because they're so squishy she has found a way to position her fingers incorrectly and so I've lowered from 5 to 4 stars.
I ordered 3 different types of pencil grips to help my 9 year old hold her pencil correctly. I didn't realize how much it was affecting her poor handwriting by holding it wrong. Of the ones we ordered, these are the best! They are more flexible (squishy a bit) than a very similar looking one and better for her tiny hands. We use it daily and her handwriting is much better!