Practicing writing for kids
Free Writing Worksheets | All Kids Network
Writing worksheets will supplement any child's education and help them build some of the fundamental skills to help them become good writers. Our collection of free writing worksheets starts with helping build the fine motor skills necessary to become an early writing. They then focus on making sure kids learn to write the letters of the alphabet and numbers. As ages progress, our writing worksheets get into spelling, grammar and some more advanced skills. Our set of "Think, Draw and Write" worksheets are a fun exercise for early writers. All of our writing worksheets are designed to print easily and are free to use over and over again!
Practice penmanship by writing uppercase and lo...
Help kids practice their handwriting skills wit...
Review printing all the letters of the alphabet...
Developing strong fine motor skills lay the fou...
Help kids learn to write each letter of the alp...
This set of worksheets is similar to our fine m...
Teach kids to print the numbers from one to twe...
Check out our new and growing collection of gra...
Generate or customize our free Handwriting Work...
Integrate our collection of graphic organizers ...
Check out our collection of free spelling works...
Kids will have fun using their imagination with...
Cut and paste the words to make sentences that ...
Draw a picture and write a little bit explainin...
Complete the sentences and then write one on yo...
Use each of the letters from the words to begin...
Use the punctuations properly at the end of the...
Help kids work with homophones with this collec...
Related Worksheets
Find More Worksheets
Popular
Related Crafts
Find More Crafts
Related Activities
Find More Activities
Related Teaching Resources
Find More Teaching Resources
12 Writing Games To Help Kids Learn To Write And Have Fun Doing It
Writing can feel daunting to young learners — there are so many letters to memorize, sounds to recall, and words to spell! You might be wondering what the best writing games are to help your child learn to write.
HOMER has got you covered with these simple and engaging writing games! With minimal equipment required, these activities can be set up within minutes and provide unlimited fun.
Before we dive into our favorite writing games, let’s discover why writing is important in child development.
Why Writing Is Crucial To Development
From their early scribbles to drawing recognizable letters, writing is a useful form of self-expression for children and allows their ideas to flow more easily.
What’s more, the alphabetic code is reversible, so children who use sounds to determine words for writing are simultaneously advancing their ability to sound out words and read coherently. Win-win!
This is a lifelong skill that your child will use every day, so it’s important to know how to best nurture and develop these emergent literacy skills from a young age.
By playing the writing games outlined below and taking the time to practice, your young writer will be an expert in no time!
Why Games Are Important For Learning
You know that it’s important for your child to develop writing skills, but you may be wondering why you should incorporate games into their learning.
Why can’t your child just sit down with a pen and paper to practice writing?
Less Stressful Learning
Here’s the stitch: Being asked to sit down and practice writing skills can be daunting for some kids. It can also be frustrating when they come across letters or words they struggle with.
Games, on the other hand, decrease stress levels and get children excited about learning.
While playing learning games, your child will not only be practicing their writing skills, but they’ll also be more focused on completing the fun activity than on getting frustrated that they can’t write the uppercase Q, Z, or J.
When children see that learning doesn’t have to be tense or highly stressful, it can also change their perception of educational activities. In fact, they may be more willing to participate in future educational games.
Motivation
Motivation is one of the biggest advantages of playing writing games.
Kids are more likely to pay attention to the instructions and participate when they see the activity is fun.
This is much more effective for teaching writing (and other) skills than simply handing them a worksheet.
Some educational games also allow children to play in pairs or groups. Interacting with peers or family members in this way is an excellent opportunity to develop critical social skills, such as listening to others, communicating effectively, and taking turns.
Friendly Competition
Kids can be very competitive — with their friends, siblings, and sometimes even with mom and dad. Playing writing games can foster a spirit of fun, healthy competition.
If you involve multiple children in these activities, the child who wins can learn to congratulate their fellow competitors and not just brag about their accomplishment. And the one who loses can learn to celebrate another person’s win and try harder next time.
Problem-Solving Skills
By nature, most games require participants to incorporate problem-solving skills, planning, and creativity. That’s a lot of mental work!
Playing writing — and other types of educational — games can help your child develop these essential life skills.
Now that we’re clear on why writing games are important, let’s get into the activities you can introduce to your child today.
We’ve divided these into three sections — writing games for preschoolers and kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders. So, feel free to scroll to the relevant section for your child (or children), and let the games begin!
Writing Games For Preschoolers And Kindergarteners
1) Disappearing Letters
What You’ll Need
- A chalkboard
- Chalk
- A paintbrush
- A cup of water
What To Do
Start this activity by writing a repeated letter, a word, or your child’s name on the chalkboard using your chalk. If you’re writing a single letter, start by writing it five times in a row.
Dip the paintbrush in the cup of water and have your child trace over each of the letters, erasing them one by one.
Once your child has mastered one letter, move on to multiple letters until they’re comfortable using this activity to “write” their name and short consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words such as dog and cat.
This activity is great for working on developing your little one’s fine motor skills as well as their spelling abilities, which will aid them as they take pencil to paper!
2) Hands-On Writing
What You’ll Need
- A tray or bin
- A fun material such as sand, flour, or shaving cream — anything that can hold a shape
- A pen and piece of paper (optional)
What To Do
To start this activity, grab a tray or bin that’s deep enough to hold your chosen material.
Fill your tray and bin with sand, flour, shaving cream, or anything else that can be used to form a shape. This is what your child will use to develop their writing skills!
Say a letter to your child (or write the letter on a piece of paper for them to copy, if needed) and have them write the letter into the sand, flour, or shaving cream with their finger.
Eventually, you can work your way up to having your child write whole words, like their name or things they love (the names of their friends and family or even their favorite foods or toys).
Don’t worry too much about what the letters look like — even scribbles are OK! Whatever your child writes to produce a letter or word is great progress.
This activity lets you make writing a fun, sensory experience! Try using different materials to keep your child engaged and to learn more about the world around them while they practice their writing skills.
You could also use a fingerpainting method for this game for some colorful fun — enjoy getting creative with this writing game!
3) Yarn Letters
What You’ll Need
- Blank sheets of paper
- Pencils
- Yarn
- Child-safe scissors
- Glue
What To Do
Grab the blank sheet of paper and help your child draw a letter of the alphabet with a pencil. Then, hand them the yarn, scissors, and glue, and help them trace the letter by cutting and gluing the string onto its shape.
Performing this task is an effective way for your child to develop their fine motor skills, a key component of writing.
In addition, this hands-on activity allows children to continue learning their letters.
Writing Games For First Graders
4) Roll The Dice
What You’ll Need
- A piece of paper
- A pen or pencil
- A dice
What To Do
This writing game is all about creating a fun story with your child using dice to determine how many words you get to add each turn!
Start by having your child choose a main character, a setting, and a problem. For example, your character might be a cat, your setting might be a garden, and the problem might be that the cat needs to find some food.
Write the first sentence of your story based on the character, setting, and problem you’ve chosen with your child. Using our example above, the first sentence might be, “Once, there was a cat in a garden who couldn’t find any food.”
After you write the first sentence, have your child roll the dice. Whatever number the dice lands on is the number of words they’ll add to the story — not one word more or less!
You can assist your child by sounding out tricky words and helping them write if needed.
Once they’ve added their words, it’s your turn to roll the dice and write your next round of words based on the dice number.
Take up to five turns each before finishing your story together by choosing an ending. Then read your story aloud to see how it all flows!
5) Speech Bubbles
What You’ll Need
- A piece of paper for drawing or a printed cartoon
- A pen or pencil
What To Do
For this activity, start by having your child draw a picture with a character or two. You could draw this scene together or even print off some characters from the internet to color and decorate together.
Once you’ve finished drawing and decorating your characters, it’s time for each of you to draw and fill in a speech bubble to create thoughts for your character (or a conversation if you drew more than one character).
For example, if your character is a dog, maybe he’s standing by an empty bowl. What might a hungry dog say? Some options could be, “Where’s my food?” or “I hope they bring pizza!”.
Let your child’s imagination run wild with possibilities for filling in the speech bubbles and enjoy this writing activity together by writing down the silly suggestions, too!
Speech bubbles are one of the most fun options for writing games as they’re quick, easy, and short for young writers.
This may help your child feel less intimidated as they explore more words to add to their vocabulary and practice forming their letters correctly.
6) Birthday Cards
What You’ll Need
- Colored pens or crayons
- Pencils
- Blank birthday card
What To Do
Birthdays are a day most people look forward to. For kids, this day usually means lots of gifts, games, a birthday cake, and, of course, a birthday card.
Help your child create a unique birthday card for their friend, neighbor, cousin, sibling, mom, or dad — whoever they want! Once they select the recipient, get the supplies you need and help them write a sweet message for their loved one.
This is a wonderful activity for your child to practice putting their thoughts on paper. They can also add flowers, hearts, and anything else that will help to make the card extra special.
Note: This activity can be used for any occasion, not just birthdays. Is it the holidays? Has the family been invited to a graduation party? Do you have a family member who’s not feeling well?
All of these are excellent opportunities to create a special card for a loved one.
7) Map Out The Story
What You’ll Need
- A blank sheet of paper
- Colored pencils (or crayons)
What To Do
The aim of this writing game is simple: create a setting for a story.
Children love when a storybook they’re reading includes some pictures and a map to bring the story to life. With this activity, they get to create their own!
All your child needs to do is draw a map of the story setting of their choosing, labeling the different areas. This can be a story they’ve read or one that’s just popped into their head.
It really doesn’t matter as long as they’re excited about it.
To help them get started, you can ask prompting questions, like:
- Does your story take place on land or in water?
- If it’s on land, what and who lives on that land?
- If it takes place in water, what types of interesting creatures are there?
- What’s the weather like?
- How many characters are there?
- Where do these characters live?
- What do the characters do?
- Are there any landmarks?
Once your child is clear about the world of the story, it’s time to draw and create it. Now you can also help your child write a story that takes place in their invented world.
For this activity, we’re not expecting incredible artwork or penmanship. Instead, the main focus is to have kids practice gripping pens or pencils and writing.
Writing Games For Second Graders
8) Grocery List Writing
What You’ll Need
- A piece of paper for making your list
- A pen or pencil
What To Do
Make the task of writing your grocery list into a game!
You can do this as part of a make-believe or role-playing game with your child, or you can create a real grocery list together before the shopping gets done.
Try planning out some meals for the week ahead, and then make a list with your child for each of the ingredients needed. Explain that writing a list helps us to remember all the things we need to buy, and discuss what items you might need to purchase.
Keep it simple and help your child by sounding out words as they write. Once the list is written, your child can enjoy checking off each item one by one after it’s been put in the cart!
9) Household I-Spy
What You’ll Need
- Two pieces of paper, one for you and one for your child
- Two pens or pencils, one for you and one for your child
- A timer or timer app
What To Do
One of our favorite writing games is this version of I-Spy with a twist!
Grab your paper and write each letter of the alphabet down the left-hand side. Once you and your child have both written the alphabet on your paper, set your timer for 10 minutes.
You’ll then race from room to room to find and write down as many objects as possible that begin with each letter of the alphabet.
Write each object next to its corresponding letter and fill in as many as you can within the time limit.
You could also set a handicap for this writing game to raise the stakes! For example, if your child’s time limit is 10 minutes, cut yours in half so that you have to find as many objects as possible in five minutes.
10) Accordion Storytelling
What You’ll Need
- A sheet of paper
- Pen
- Ruler
What To Do
The first player will start the story at the top of your clean sheet of paper by writing two sentences on separate lines. They can write about any topic they want.
When they’re done writing, they’ll need to fold the paper over the first sentence and pass the paper on to the next player. This means that the first sentence won’t be seen. The next writer will only be able to see the second sentence on the page.
This player will need to write their own two sentences based on the line they can see. After that, they’ll fold down the first line of what they wrote and pass it on to the next player, too.
The paper will continue to be passed around and folded like an accordion.
The round ends once all the paper has been folded up, and there’s no space left to write. Once you’ve reached this stage, open it up and read the story aloud together.
What interesting story did you come up with? Get ready to have a good laugh!
Note: You can take turns reading one sentence each, or you can nominate one person to read the whole story to everyone.
This is a great game to play with the whole family or even just two people, although it is the most fun with at least three people. And it will encourage creativity and writing skills.
11) Pen Pal Writing
What You’ll Need
- Paper
- Pens or pencils
- A pen pal
What To Do
Writing letters to pen pals is very traditional. In a nutshell, it involves two people in a long-distance friendship who communicate by writing letters to each other.
Now, with the advancement of technology, very few people still do this via snail mail.
But it can be a great way to encourage children to write.
Who can your child write to? They can choose a friend who’s moved schools, a cousin who lives in another state, or their grandparents. It can be anyone they’d like to send a message to!
This is a fun way to help children learn about mailing letters and how the postal system works. They also get to create memories and can keep the letters their pen pal writes to reflect on for years to come!
12) Rewrite The Ending
What You’ll Need
- Paper
- Pen or pencils
- Storybook
What To Do
Children will need to exercise their imaginations to play this game.
To get started, read a book aloud to your child. (This can be an old favorite or a new story.) Once you’ve finished reading, encourage them to create their own version of the ending.
It can be challenging for children to imagine their favorite stories in a different way, so you might need to help your child think outside the box:
- What if the frog never turned into a prince but into a big elephant instead?
- What if the three little pigs learned karate and decided to fight the wolf?
- Could the little mermaid have a twin sister she just discovered?
This activity lets your child exercise their imagination while also practicing their writing skills.
If this is done with multiple children, it will be fun to see what exciting versions of the script each child comes up with.
Enjoy Learning To Write With HOMER!
We hope you’ve found some new favorite writing games from our activities in this guide!
From creating sensory play activities with sand and fingerpaints to writing a grocery list together, there are so many ways to get creative with your child and make writing a fun shared activity.
For even more writing fun, unbox a learning adventure with our Explore Letters Kit. Watch your child build their literacy skills, using their imagination to lead them through a variety of writing and spelling activities!
Author
Writing classes with children 5–7 years old
Writing classes with children 5–7 years old
Time for boring copybooks is in the past! Stop torturing your child with endless hooks, dashes and circles.
Seriously! Take and print out a couple of pages of copybooks. Feel like a first grader, start tracing these dotted lines. Just write with the hand you don't normally use. If you are right-handed, try writing with your left hand and vice versa. Well, how do you feel? Fun? Interesting? Exciting? So maybe a couple more pages? Not?
So your children will say no. Because today's children are arranged differently. They are freer in every respect, they cannot stand violence and coercion. Therefore, the most important task is not to force, but to interest. Feel the difference?
Sensitive period for writing
Beautiful fonts are everywhere. Advertising, signs, logos, labels, design of posts in social networks. It's great to try to write Coca-Cola on your own as beautifully as on a branded bottle. And this is much more interesting than writing, and the result is the same - we write, work out the slope, pressure, thickness, size, smoothness and many other subtleties of writing.
There is such a thing as “ sensitive period” is a period of a child's natural interest in any activity. The sensitive period for reading is 3 years, and for writing 4–5 years. Yes, it is at the age of 4-5 that a child begins to take an interest in writing. Not by drawing - we all love this, almost from the cradle - but by writing. It is at 4–5 years old that a child awakens a keen interest in letters. Therefore, it is very important to support the baby and give the necessary tools so that he can easily develop and consolidate this interest in practice.
Moreover, starting to write with a pen in copybook ahead of time is a rather harmful occupation. Why? Because the muscles of the hand that are involved in writing are formed rather late. When a child is forced to write too early, in the vast majority of cases he writes like a chicken paw and this does not improve with age. The child gets used to using the wrong motor patterns. The earlier you force the child to write, the worse his handwriting.
Yes, this is such a paradox.
Therefore, it is so important to start writing not with a pen, but with a brush. The correct position of the hand, the correct writing, begins with the hand.
The Magic Key of Writing
In writing classes, we not only practice hand positioning, learn to write, train and work out the necessary motor patterns, but also learn to be interested in letters and love them. Letters are a separate sign system, a separate language! Cipher, code - you can call it in different ways. The main thing is that the essence does not change: letters are our guide to the wonderful world of written text. It's like getting a magic key and opening the door to a wonderful and vast world of the unknown!
When a child masters writing, he immediately opens up new opportunities for self-expression. He starts signing his drawings, starts writing notes, he studies and experiments, expressing his ideas, thoughts, feelings. It's like changing a digging stick for an excavator - the field of possibilities is expanding significantly.
Your child will write calligraphy!
Many children in school have problems with writing just because they are taught incorrectly and the foundation is laid incorrectly. If you start with a pen and copybook, get ready for problems at school. You need to start with creative calligraphy. From a creative point of view, this is the key point. It is important that the child be interested, then he will really love the letters and will write with pleasure. Gradually, we will come to writing that same handwritten text with a pen in a notebook that everyone is dreaming about.
We will come to this not through a thorny path, but along a magical path in a fairy forest. As a result, the child will have really beautiful, calligraphic handwriting. Someday later, you will still receive greeting cards from children with warm wishes and a beautiful inscription inside.
Parents about the violation of the letter | MKU DPO "GTsOiZ "Master"
But if for an adult writing is a highly automated skill, then for a student it is a complex process that is formed consciously in the learning process.
The letter consists of a chain of successive actions. To write a word, the child must determine its sound structure, the sequence and place of each sound, correlate the selected sound with a certain image of the letter, reproduce the letter with the help of hand movements. In order to write a sentence, it is necessary to mentally build it, speak it, maintain the desired order of writing, break the sentence into its constituent words, and mark the boundaries of each word.
Some children have great difficulty in learning these skills. Children, knowing the alphabet, find it difficult to compose a word from letters or make mistakes when writing it (omission, replacement of letters, designation of softness of consonants, writing prepositions with words together; separate spelling of words, etc.).
Parents are not always able to explain why their children make mistakes. Many people think that this is inattention and, trying to correct mistakes, they begin to work intensively with the child on writing from dictation.
The child develops a negative attitude towards writing. To avoid this, it is necessary to analyze the child's mistakes.
Mistakes such as omission of vowels, permutation of letters, additions of letters, omissions, additions, permutations of syllables, continuous spelling of words, separate spelling of words, continuous spelling of prepositions with other words, separate spelling of prefixes and roots arise due to difficulty in dividing sentences into words , words into syllables, sounds. Replacement of letters denoting whistling and hissing, voiced and deaf, hard and soft u, o-y e-i) are observed due to a violation of differentiation, recognition of close speech sounds. Sometimes the writing reflects a faulty pronunciation. The reason for the occurrence of substitutions and distortions in the writing of graphically similar handwritten letters (i-sh, p-t, t-sh, v-d, b-d, l-m, e-s, etc.) is the lack of formation of visual-spatial representations. The underdevelopment of the grammatical structure of speech in writing is manifested in a change in case endings, incorrect use of prepositions, gender, number, omissions of sentence members, violations of the sequence of words in a sentence, etc.
If there are any of the constantly recurring specific mistakes in the child's work, then we can talk about a violation of writing (dysgraphia), which is a serious obstacle in the acquisition of literacy by students at the initial stages and mastering the grammar of the native language at later stages.
In this case, it is necessary to contact the school teacher-speech therapist. In addition to the work of a speech therapist to correct dysgraphia, parents should also be active in helping to overcome speech therapy errors in writing in their children.
What should parents do?
- Pay attention to hygienic rules for writing (correct posture when writing, holding the pen correctly, tilting the notebook).
- When choosing stationery, choose pens or pencils with ribbed or pimpled finishes. Massaging the pads of the fingers is important for the proper functioning of the brain when writing.
- The main task in handwriting correction will be writing small texts in a notebook in a cell, where each letter is written in a separate cell.
Small handwriting is more difficult to correct than large and uneven. - If your school asks you to write long texts, break it up into parts and write it down, pronouncing each word.
- When copying, it is necessary to teach the child to memorize the syllable, not the letter, as early as possible, since the syllable is the main unit in reading and writing.
- Every day write short dictations with a pencil, but do not correct mistakes, but mark the words in which they are made. The child will be able not to cross out, but to find and erase his mistakes, write correctly.
- Be sure to teach your child to pronounce the words when writing, first out loud, then in a whisper, a hidden inner voice. If pronunciation is prohibited, the writing becomes worse, the number of errors associated with missing letters increases. When pronouncing a word by syllables, the student's visual and auditory channels of perception are included in the work.
- Use surfaces around the house to display posters and signs to help your child remember the correct spelling of words.
- Praise your child for every success.
- Evaluate the child's work, not the child.
What not to do?
- Do not force your child to read large texts, write large dictations with him.
- Don't try to speed up your reading.
- Do not force homework to be rewritten many times, this will not only increase the number of errors, but also instill uncertainty in the child.
- Exclude tasks of the type "Fix the mistake". Teach them not to make mistakes, but do not offer to correct them.
- If you decide to teach your child to write without errors, then do not pay attention to ugly handwriting. Don't try to fix all bugs at the same time.
- Do not get irritated, do not scold, and even more so, do not punish the child if he makes a mistake.
- Do not praise without a reason.
We must not forget that a child should only hear competent speech in the family, see books in the hands of parents, feel your love and care.
