Learning how to write for toddlers

5 Secret Ways To Teach Your Toddler To Write

I’m letting you in on what learning-to-write experts (pediatric Occupational Therapists) know about supporting early writing skills. What’s on this list might surprise you because it includes activities that don’t directly appear related to writing at all! That’s one of the most powerful secrets parents can learn - that toddlers aren’t ready for specific writing instruction.

Support your toddler’s writing skills by meeting them RIGHT where they are developmentally RIGHT NOW.

Let’s take a look at what your toddler is developmentally ready for that will support writing skills in the years to come…

This page includes affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission when you purchase products through these links. I only link to products I use or love. Thanks for supporting CanDo Kiddo. See my disclosure page for more information.

1. Active Play

Climbing, sliding, swinging, hanging, pushing, pulling, digging, jumping, rolling, and running: these are all ways that your child develops the strength, coordination, sensory processing, and self-regulation skills for reading and writing. Outside is best (nature supports sensory regulation), but there are certainly ways to do active play indoors (follow my Pinterest board for ideas).

2. Exposure to Print Materials

Read books together every day, and go to a public library weekly if you have one available. Let your child see you read - books, magazines, and the newspaper. Don’t stress if you don’t have an adorable book nook or trendy reading teepee in your home - a kid-accessible book basket or shelf and a floor, couch or lap work just fine.

3. Play With Manipulatives

Little toddler hands are not ready for the grasping, visual and coordination skills needed to write letters or detailed pictures. The best way to support them gaining those skills is through play with manipulatives.

Duplos, stringing beads, play-doh, kinetic sand, puzzles, stickers, doll babies with clothes to take off and put on, Magnatiles, and my toddler’s favorite - "little guys” to put in rescue vehicles - are all perfect examples of open-ended toys that encourage the hand-eye coordination and hand strength needed for writing.

4. Exposure To Writing Tools

Drop the pre-academic skills educational agenda and just let your kiddo scribble, paint and explore writing tools and the marks they make. Developmentally toddlers are learning to make simple pre-writing marks - vertical and horizontal lines and circles.

The classic choice is crayons. But writing tools also include paint brushes, sidewalk chalk, Do a Dot markers, Magnadoodle boards, Water Wow paint-free painting pages, and even a stick to draw roads in the sandbox. Make these items available for your kiddo to get creative with.

5. Follow Your Child’s Interests

Some kiddos will start to recognize letters at 2 years old and show an interest in the world of letters and numbers. I remember my son asking what every.single.construction.sign said at that age. Other kiddos won’t have much interest in letters and numbers until closer to 4 or 5. Both are okay. Seriously. Whatever your toddler’s interest level is in writing is OKAY.

The beauty of this list is that it fits all levels of interest in writing. Have a kid who would rather chase a ball or play trucks? That’s active play and play with manipulatives. Have a kiddo who loves art and just makes scribbles? Sweet, they’re getting some amazing exposure to writing tools. Does your child have a passion for animals? Reading books about animals is supporting writing skills.

Here’s the thing…

At their young ages, I take a very unstructured, child-led approach to teaching typically developing kiddos. I trust children to learn to write and read when they’re ready by following their interests and passions. I respect play and connection as the most valuable means for learning.

Both clinically as an OT and as a mom,  I've seen that young kiddos learn better from hands-on play than from technology or structured, seated work.

One set of learning tools I’m grateful to have in my house are from Fundanoodle, an educational readiness program that was designed by two Occupational Therapists (and fellow mamas) I used to work with. If you’ve read here long, you know I don’t do “sponsored posts” or get paid to endorse products. But when I love something, I happily share it! And since some of my OT friends are the creators of Fundanoodle and others are Fundanoodle Ambassadors, our house is well stocked with Fundanoodle gifts. 

Fundanoodle products fit perfectly into our playtimes, and they incorporate all 5 of the secrets I just described. As I use them with my kiddos, I can TELL these products were designed by developmental experts.

To show you how playful and unstructured we are in our explorations of letters and writing, here are 12 silly and educational ways we play and learn with Fundanoodle’s products:

Letters In A Tunnel

Mommy makes a letter sound and then says the name of a letter. Then toddler finds the letter from 4-8 letter cards on the ground and then carries it through a play tunnel to Mommy. With practice, sometimes the letter sound is all that’s needed. (use Upper Case Muscle Mover Cards)

Guess The Animal

Mommy makes the initial letter sound and movement of an animal on one of the Muscle Mover cards.  Then toddler stomps on the card spread out on the floor in a small group. (use Upper Case Muscle Mover Cards)

Erase Mommy’s Letters On Dry Erase Board

Mommy slowly writes a letter on the dry erase board talking through the strokes using their Fundanoodle names like “zip” and “zoom.” Then Mommy excitedly shows toddler, who uses the eraser end of the dry erase marker to erase the letter - (sometimes using similar writing strokes and sometimes a frantic scribble). Then Mommy pretends very dramatically to be sad or shocked because toddlers and preschoolers LOVE a good dose of drama in their play and are learning how to read the nonverbal communication of others. (use magnetic dry erase board)

Building Letters

Construction worker dress-up clothes optional. Toddler picks a letter card (our blueprint/ plan for construction) and find the “building supplies” that Mommy asks for (“I need a short pink piece of wood and a little green curve”). Then Mommy puts letters pieces on the magnet board to build the letter and toddler secures them by hammering and using various other very important tools. There are high fives and smiles until an earthquake (hurricane, flood or other natural disaster) knocks the pieces off the board and we have to rebuild a new letter. (use I Can Build Upper Case Letters! magnets and magnetic dry erase board)

Building Pictures

We definitely don’t just stick to building letters with the magnet pieces. Since the magnet board is STRONG and really tough for toddler to pull pieces off of, we put them on the floor and make people, animals, and all sorts of pictures. I’ve attempted to build just about anything toddler can think of (water towers are my favorite request), and toddler has fun building, too. (use I Can Build Upper Case Letters! magnets)

DIY Dry Erase Activities

What started as an attempt for this budget conscious mama to re-use pages from our giant activity book, also turned out to be great for handwriting development. I taped the pages to the inside of our glass front door and let toddler use a dry erase marker. Writing on a vertical surface like this helps little ones learn to bend their wrists back as they hold a writing tool - an important position for handwriting. It also promotes shoulder strengthening. (use I Can Do Fun Activities! book)

Stack Up Wood

Sometimes we “stack up wood” by matching and sorting like sizes and colors of magnetic pieces. This is a great way to include color and size recognition into play. (use I Can Build Upper Case Letters! magnets)

Toddler Teacher

Using the dry erase board and marker or the magnetic pieces on the floor, toddler makes a picture and Mommy has to copy it and then submit it to the toddler teacher for critique. I mean, what toddler doesn’t LOVE being the boss! (use I Can Build Upper Case Letters! magnets or magnetic dry erase board)

Match What Mommy Draws

Mommy needs to collect the letters but she can’t talk anymore (“Oh NO!”). So she has to draw the letter on the dry erase board, and toddler has to find it from a small group of Muscle Mover cards on the floor, letter-side up. (use Upper Case Muscle Mover Cards and magnetic dry erase board)

Letter Frog Hop

We use our number frog bean-bags but any bean-bag-type object will do. We spread Muscle Mover Cards all over the floor (sometimes the whole set of 26) letter-side up. We sit on the couch and toss bean bags down onto the letters. We (usually Mommy first and Toddler repeating) excitedly announce what letters get landed on. (use Upper Case Muscle Mover Cards)

Magnetic Road

Those magnetic letter pieces are great for building a long and winding road for little cars or little people to travel on. It’s a fun way to engage with manipulatives and to reinforce the names of the writing strokes (you can use the Fundanoodle names). (use I Can Build Upper Case Letters! magnets)

Haircuts

A few of the activity pages in the I Can Cut! activity book depict a character with long hair and a dotted line across the hair for cutting. This concept was sooooo hilarious to Toddler that now a favorite activity is Mommy drawing a face with crazy long hair and toddler cutting it. Even more fun is when Mommy then acts out a dramatic response or critique ("OH NO!!! It's so short. How will I ever put it in a ponytail again!" or "Wow - this is the fanciest haircut I've seen. Thank you! Thank you! Can you cut my friend's hair like this?") (use safety scissors)

Popular Toddler Play Posts:

Learning to Write: The Correct Way to Teach Kids

• Share
• Email

Learning to write is a process that starts long before a child can hold a pencil and write letters.

If you’re wondering how to teach preschoolers to write, the answer may surprise you…

We shouldn’t really be teaching preschoolers to write formally. Instead, we should be teaching them important foundational skills, called pre-writing skills.

Here are the reasons why, and also how to teach kids to write using appropriate activities.

The Process of Learning to Write

There are several reasons why teaching kids to write too early will actually do more harm than good.

It is important to leave the formal writing for when they are developmentally ready.

Children learn through play and are stimulated at their own developmental level while playing. This allows them to naturally progress and mature, developing more advanced skills as they go.

A child is not usually physically and developmentally ready to write during the toddler or preschool years. They will start experimenting with letters on their own and “writing” on their artwork, but they should not be forced to learn the correct letter formation or write on a line.

Here are some reasons why.

During the first few years, children are developing their fine motor control. Their finger muscles need to be strengthened through activities such as drawing, painting, playing with playdough, etc.

When the finger muscles become strengthened, children learn how to hold a pencil correctly, with a tripod grip. This is not easy for young children and they take time to develop this grip by holding crayons, chalk, pencils, etc.

Younger kids will find it easier to hold thicker utensils like jumbo chalk or crayons. As they develop their grip and finger control, they can hold thinner crayons and pencils. 

Gross motor control means children are able to move and control their bodies. In order to sit and write at a desk, they must have strong core muscles, good posture and not tire easily.

As children grow, the natural way of developing is usually large to small.

Here are some examples of how you can see this in your children’s development:

• Catching large balls before small ones
• Using thick paintbrushes before fine ones
• Developing large muscles before small muscles
• Reading books with big letters before fine writing
• Building puzzles with large pieces before tiny pieces

This same principle must be applied to teaching children to write. Letters should be introduced in large before small. It is completely inappropriate to expect a young child to form a small intricate letter properly.

You can teach your child to write their name by introducing the letters through play and in a large format before writing them on paper.

Children develop spatial perception and a sense of their position in space when playing by doing things like climbing through tunnels and chasing each other.

This helps them, much later, to space letters and words correctly on a page – next to each other, on the line, straight, small enough, starting next to the margin, etc.

When formal writing is introduced at school, the teacher does not dive in and show the children how each letter is formed. They start with patterning.

They make zigzags and waves and all sorts of patterns on thick lines before teaching the letters.

These patterns all have shapes that teach the movements that children will use in the letters. A capital letter “A”, for example, has a zig-zag in it and a “C” can be introduced with a curly wave pattern.

When they have learned to make these patterns, letters are introduced, one at a time, with separate lessons for each letter.

The teacher will explain the formation for each one e.g. Start at the top right, go up and around, all the way back up, then down the same line. Children must use the proper formation each time they write a letter.

It does not make sense to skip all these educational practices and teach your young child to write the letters out of the blue.

Having said that, never get in the way of natural learning. If a child is writing letters on their own or forming words, encourage that without trying to correct them.

How to Teach a Child to Write

The good news is, there are lots of things you can do to teach your children the necessary pre-writing skills they need. This will ensure that when they are ready, they will learn to write naturally and with ease.

• Expose children to print often and talk about the print (road signs, books, etc.)
• Model the correct letter formation when writing and put their names on the top of their drawings.
• Develop their fine motor skills.
• Encourage your children to draw, paint and use lots of art materials.
• Develop their gross motor skills.
• Correct their pencil grip or use a rubber pencil grip.
• Let your children have lots of time for free play.
• Play with wooden, plastic or foam letters.

Get FREE access to Printable Puzzles, Stories, Activity Packs and more!

Join Empowered Parents + and you’ll receive a downloadable set of printable puzzles, games and short stories, as well as the Learning Through Play Activity Pack which includes an entire year of activities for 3 to 6-year-olds.
Access is free forever.

Signing up for a free Grow account is fast and easy and will allow you to bookmark articles to read later, on this website as well as many websites worldwide that use Grow.

• Share
• Email

step-by-step instructions with expert advice

And now the first letter, the first word, appears on a piece of paper. Uneven and uncertain. But long-awaited. How to teach a child to write? How can I help him develop writing skills at home? Answers-in our material

Alena Gerashchenko

Author KP

Anna Shumilova

Methodist of the Teacher Platform

Mars Diamond 9000

Director0003

Writing is an important skill that is learned in preschool and elementary school. The opinions of experts differ: someone thinks that it is better not to put a letter to the child at home, someone, on the contrary, is convinced that it is the parent who opens the world of writing to the child. We believe that you can start developing the skill of writing letters at home - learn to draw pictograms, connect dots on paper, draw - not write - letters. Leave the capital letters and intricate, ornate words to the schoolteachers. Teach your child the basics. Get him interested in drawing, help develop spatial perception of reality, teach hand-finger coordination. We will tell you step by step how to teach your child the basics of writing before school.

Step-by-step instructions for teaching a child to write

Everything needs a system. In training, a systematic, everyday contribution to the development of skills is very important. Compliance with the following steps will lay the foundation for high-quality development of the child's writing.

Step #1. Get interested

Start telling children in an exciting way what writing is, why it is needed, how it originated and developed. The main thing is to present the story not with dry facts. Do it brightly, colorfully, picturesquely. Show your child photographs of the walls of the Egyptian pyramids, which depict various drawings and hieroglyphs. Tell your son or daughter the story of the Novgorod boy Onfim, who wrote birch bark letters in the 13th century, show his monument, and the letters and drawings. The emotional presentation of the story, coupled with illustrative material - all this will resonate with the child. Also invite the child to do the exercises during the stories. Here are a couple of activities to accompany stories that will help your child understand the nature of writing and want to learn to write on their own as soon as possible.

Exercise 1

Show your child pictograms (wall pictures that our ancestors used to communicate information to each other), invite him to fantasize and make up an oral story based on the pictures he saw.

Exercise 2

And vice versa: make up a story with your child and invite him to illustrate it in detail with the help of pictures. Such tasks, among other things, develop fantasy, speech and storytelling skills.

After the pictograms, go on to explain ideographic writing. It sounds complicated, but in fact, ideography uses simplified pictograms - symbols. The Chinese language is built on symbolism (principle 1 character = 1 word), designations in the transport sector. Acquaintance with the symbols will be interesting to the child if you pay attention to them during a walk.

You can teach a child to draw simple images with meaning: for example, two wavy horizontal lines symbolize a pond; crossed circle - prohibition, the word "no" and so on. Stories about ideographic writing and "practical ideography" will expand the horizons of the baby, teach him to perceive the world around him more sensitively, develop creative thinking, and teach spatial perception.

If you feel that the kid is ready for more (he asks questions, draws a lot), tell him about modern writing, about languages. Explain that the Egyptians wrote from right to left - it was inconvenient: hieroglyphs, drawings were smeared by hand. Show your child that writing like this is not very convenient. Tell us that we inherit the experience of the ancient Greeks - we write from left to right. Take a digression into history and tell the fidget that Latin was developed from the ancient Greek language, and it became the official language of the church. Latin formed the basis of many other languages ​​​​(English, German). And our ancestors developed Slavic writing, the Russian language. Conclude that today we use the Russian script, an alphabet of 33 letters. Show the child a primer, study each letter with him. Invite the child to circle each of them with a finger.

Step #2: Practice Moderately

Spend no more than 15 minutes a day on letter-drawing. Let the child during this time repeat the outlines of the letters from the primer. Let him try to draw them. If the letters are crooked - it's not scary. It should not scare you that the signs crawling out from under the pencil of a novice writer do not quite look like letters. Transform the process of learning to write into a game - sit next to the baby and draw incomprehensible signs of eyes, smiles, legs and arms. So the child will have more fun. He will trust you, the process, the primer, and next time he will accurately draw a letter, and not a hippopotamus or a fat cat. The main rule is to learn to draw letters for a quarter of an hour. Let the child rest. Even the creativity that the kid is passionate about can exhaust him and discourage him from learning to write.

Spend no more than 15 minutes a day on letter-drawing. Photo: globallookpress.com

Step No. 3. “We wrote, we wrote, our fingers were tired!” Develop fine motor skills

Together with your child, sculpt from plasticine, build towers and wonderful animals from the designer, draw, color, make applications, lay out mosaics, embroider with a cross. Practice daily, captivate your child with creativity and at the same time help him develop fine motor skills of his hands. If he learns to manipulate various small objects, it will be easier for him to learn to write. Fine motor skills training allows you to develop the temporal regions of the brain that are responsible for speech. If the baby has good motor skills, he writes well, then it will also not be difficult for him to tell a poem beautifully or come up with a story and vividly present it to his family, classmates, teacher. In man, everything is very subtly interconnected.

Read also

"Mom, buy": how to deal with children's requests in the shopping center, parental abuse in response: perhaps each of us was an unwitting witness to such heartbreaking scenes. Together with the teacher-psychologist Ekaterina Bolysheva, we learn to avoid mistakes that can lead to children's tantrums in the store0035

The child's back must not be bent by the wheel. Incorrect posture will negatively affect the health of the internal organs of the baby, his psychological state, even the activity of his thinking. Do sports with your child (gymnastics, swimming). Show him how to walk correctly - straight with a slightly raised chin, rushing the top of his head up. Teach him to sit at the table correctly: the child should bend in the lower back, the shoulders should be slightly relaxed, lowered. The kid should not lean heavily on the back of the chair and shift the entire body weight onto the table. The muscles of the upper body should be toned and slightly tense, but the neck should not be pulled forward. A slight tilt of the head is acceptable. In any case, consult with your pediatrician about how to properly seat your child at the table. He will suggest effective practices for controlling the muscles of the back, neck, arms and will talk in detail about why it is so important to develop the habit of sitting at the table correctly.

Popular questions and answers

How to teach a child to write beautifully?

Anna Shumilova, methodologist of the Uchi.ru platform:

— Is it really necessary to demand beautiful handwriting and perfectly clean notebooks from a child? Some parents are worried when teachers lower their children's grades for the design of notebooks, and they believe that the main thing is to write down the exercise without errors, give the correct answer to the question, and find the right solution to the problem. Other parents, on the contrary, force the child to rewrite the work with blots and expect the teacher to spend enough time on calligraphy in the classroom. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. Any teacher knows from his own experience that in dirty, untidy notebooks there are rarely work without errors. Order and accuracy help to form a harmonious, logical thinking. If the student writes quickly and readably, this becomes a huge advantage for him in mastering the school material. We are of the opinion that the teacher should teach children to write. Any adult person knows for himself that it is quite difficult to change handwriting or the way letters are written. Incorrect spelling of letters will not help either the first grader or his teacher, but, on the contrary, will cause additional difficulties. However, a parent can help.

If you want to help your child prepare for writing, it is best to start with block letters and do no more than 20 minutes at a time. You should also explain to the future student the basic principles of writing.

1. The line is the letter house. It has a floor and a ceiling. You can not break through the floor and stick out the legs of the letters from there. You can't break through the ceiling and stick your head out like a giraffe. If such a nuisance nevertheless happened with the letters, you can give the child a colored pencil and ask them to underline the hooligan letters and ask what exactly is wrong with them. After that, be sure to underline the letters that turned out to be written correctly, and praise the child. Another great exercise is coloring. We select a small part of the picture and ask to color it without going beyond the outline of the figure. For little naughty fingers, it's not so easy.

2. When we write letters, we imagine the rails on which the train travels. If the rails cross, the train will derail and fall. The letters should not dance on the line, but stand like soldiers. After the kid writes a line, you can take a ruler and draw vertical lines through the letters. If the rails are straight everywhere, then the train arrived wonderfully, and you can put a big fat plus on this line! Over time, the rails may become slanted, but should remain parallel.

3. Written letters consist of a certain set of elements: sticks, hooks, loops and ovals. As we wrote above, it’s better not to collect letters without a teacher, but it’s worth practicing writing sticks of different lengths. To work with an oval, we can draw a box. The oval should look out the window and not get stuck in it. If a child draws a circle, then his chubby cheeks will not crawl through the window. Cheeks will have to be erased. In addition to writing, we advise you to have an A4 lined notebook. If you don't have one, the regular one will do. First, the parent himself draws a large beautiful printed letter. The child paints its elements in different colors. Then we write giant letters (several centimeters high). At the beginning of the line, the parent puts dots, the child circles them, and only then appends the line on his own. Next come the middle letters and, towards the end of the page, the midget letters. While the child is writing, you can ask him to pronounce the sound of a capital letter in a rough voice, the sound of a middle letter in a normal voice, and squeak the sound of a midget letter. That will be much more fun!

How to teach a child to write quickly?

Anna Shumilova:

— A quick letter is a continuous letter. He will be taught by a teacher at school. As soon as the literacy period ends (around February 1st grade) and the Russian language begins, you can dictate very short dictations to your child. You can use the collection of O. V. Uzorova. You can come up with short funny sentences about your child yourself. This will generate additional interest in the letter. Only practice and control over the maximum continuity of the hand while writing one word will help to write quickly. So that the child does not forget what this or that letter looks like (which happens up to grade 3), it is necessary to spend minutes of calligraphy.

Read also

Motivation of a child to study at school

Komsomolskaya Pravda tells why children are waiting for the Day of Knowledge, but after a week they suddenly start to get sick and tells how to make the child motivated to study

2

Read more

How to teach a child to write at home?

Almaz Marsov, director of the online school "It's clear":

- Learning to write can be divided into 2 stages: preparing the hand for writing and writing itself. At the preparatory stage, you need to teach the child to coordinate brush movements. To do this, play and create with your child. Coloring pages, hatching tasks, as well as graphic exercises will help you: graphomotor tests, labyrinths, tasks of the series “connect by dots”, “connect by dotted lines”, “draw the second half” and so on. In a word, these are the tasks that will teach a child to use a pencil or pen - to set the direction of the lines, control the force of pressure, control the size of the image, the clarity of the lines and smoothness. After that, you can start writing letters and numbers.

The main principle is to go from simple to complex. First, you can learn to write part of a letter or number, then the letter or number in full. It is important to show the child the correct sequence of writing letters and numbers: from left to right, from top to bottom. Too many children come to school with the wrong letter and are faced with the need to relearn. To avoid this, we recommend that you complete tasks with the children and control the correct spelling until they develop a writing skill.

Of course, the best helper is prescription. As soon as the child masters the letter with a hint, you can move on to a more difficult option - writing in a notebook. The more practice, the more confident and better the child's writing. Finally, the skill needs to be consolidated and improved. Write everywhere: sign drawings and crafts, write on asphalt with crayons, on misted glass with your finger - turn writing into a game and an interesting activity for a child. The more you practice, the faster and more beautiful the child will write.

What kind of games help children develop writing skills?

Anna Shumilova:

— Almost any exercise can be turned into a game. It depends on the submission of the material. You can draw letters with your nose in the air, collect letters from sweets. You can color the letters, circle them with dots, and then give them gifts. If the letter is oval, it is necessary to give objects that also contain an oval in their image. Write not only at the table, but also with chalk on the pavement, a marker on a blackboard, sand on glass or on a piece of paper, show letters on your fingers, ask you to guess which letter you are in.

What determines how fast a child learns to write?

Anna Shumilova:

— We recommend taking your child to at least a few calligraphy lessons or watching video tutorials on YouTube. The teacher will tell you how to correctly determine the size of the line and letter. Pen and ink will not allow the child to rush. He will learn to breathe correctly, regulate the pressure on the pen, focus on writing, see the extraordinary artistic beauty of various styles of writing letters. This will be a great experience and will help the kid develop writing skills and strive for perfection.

Read also

How to teach a child to do homework on their own

In an ideal world, children themselves go to bed and do their homework - but alas, in reality, everything is not so. Most parents of schoolchildren still have to help them with their homework

16 page Adult goods Lighting Packaging Goods with favorite heroes Our development Contact us DUSESELORF CARCHA : 5541140 Min. order quantity: 1 set: no age: from 3 years old number of pages: 16 Cover type: softcover Subject: educational aids 3-5 years Availability: out of stock All characteristics 26 RUB P 18 p* out of stock Description and characteristics Delivery and payment Producer country Russia Trade mark LITUR Article 5541140 Min. order quantity 1 Set NO Age from 3 years Number of pages 16 Type of covers soft binding Tematic cube dm 0.060 Product volume, l 0.06 Box volume, l 12 Weight, g 35 Material Paper Packing quantity 10 Type of individual packaging Without packaging Number of pages 16 Handing over to delivery to 2/18/2023 (Your order will be shipped within 5 business days after payment). Learn more Christmas gifts for mimi How to learn color Test reading grade level 3 syllable words kindergarten Learn colours in english Reading ability tests Brothers grimm jack and the beanstalk Short stories for preschool children Letter to m Excavators and diggers Children playing in field