Toddlers learning to write

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…

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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:

How to Help 3 & 4 Year Olds Learning Handwriting

“How do you teach 3 & 4 year olds to print letters and numbers?”

You don’t.

Sorry for the click bait headline but it’s the truth: you don’t need to be working on handwriting (or printing) with 3 and 4 year olds.

It’s not the right time for that.

Although three and four year olds are (typically) not developmentally ready for handwriting skills, a myth has formed that handwriting and letter formation is, in fact, a preschool skill. This myth is in large part due to a shift in academic standards asking children to learn/do more earlier in life (Almon & Miller, 2011).

There’s also an expectation that children will enter kindergarten with skills that are not developmentally appropriate (Faguano, 2019). Handwriting and printing letters is one such skill.

I love a good topic sentence to here’s the goals of this post:

1. Acknowledge the current myths around handwriting as a preschool activity
2. Give you more context around just how complicated this skills is
3. Provide ideas for what you can do at home to help your child form PRE-writing skills

Handwriting is a visual motor skill that develops over time.

Handwriting requires a whole host of foundational skills for a child to be successful and ready to (literally) put pen to paper.

• Core strength to hold their body upright
• Postural stability to support fine motor precision
• Strong pincer grasp (to pick up the pencil)
• Arm and hand strength (can they manipulate an object one-handed?)
• Ability to cross the midline (crossing their arm from one side of their body to pick up something on the other side)
• Concentration skills for focus
• Visual memory skills (to remember, copy, and translate how a letter looks)
• Visual motor skills for their eyes and hands to communicate
• AND MANY MORE THAN EVEN THIS

All that to say: there is a lot more that goes into handwriting than might be immediately considered.

We can’t ask a child’s body to develop faster just to get them to write earlier.

Similar to many, many other skills in childhood, developing visual motor skills follows a predictable sequence.

1. Visually recognize shapes and letters (we can’t expect them to draw what they don’t “know”)
2. Tracing shapes and letters (this gets skipped a lot – tracing is a HUGE step)
3. Imitating a shape or letter (using step by step guidance for each stroke)
4. Copying shapes and letters
5. Independently drawing a shape or writing a letter.

These five steps, this sequence, is not expected to happen over night and will take many months and years. This is yet another plug for “you cannot rush into handwriting.”

The truth is: rushing into handwriting before a child has truly mastered and developed all the skills needed to successfully print letters and numbers can often lead to a frustrating process and potential problems (Faguano, 2019).

Expecting children to learn a skill before they have the ability
to store and call upon prior learning, can lead to a number of problems.

No one wants handwriting to be something kids dread. We want a smooth transition into writing, if possible.

We can often give our children that by giving them the gift of time. It’s noted that children often learn better literacy skills through natural processes than through drilled activities – handwriting included (Faguano, 2019).

While some kids will master these foundational skills earlier than others, and may start putting pen to paper sooner, remember that is not typical of all children and is not a sign that your child is behind.

But if you have concerns about your child’s motor skill development, trust your instincts and talk to their pediatrician not people on the Internet.

It also requires that the bones in a child’s hands have developed – and again, that’s not something we can rush just because we “want” to get our child writing or because our neighbor’s child is already printing.

Hand bones develop throughout childhood. No amount of pressure to write earlier will make those bones grow any faster.

In the preschool years, let’s shift focus from “teaching handwriting” or “working on printing letters” back to more developmentally and age appropriate pre-writing activities.

These are activities that provide children the chance to work on those foundational skills that are so important.

Now, these activities are NOT a check list. This is not “try it once and move on.” These are on-going strength building activities. Imagine only doing leg-day one time at the gym and saying “I’m good! Mastered those lifts and ready to move on.”

Continuing to do these strength and skill building activities with your child is IMPORTANT. So important that it calls for all caps.

LOOKING FOR ONE-ON-ONE SUPPORT? Schedule a consultation HERE with Laura from The OT Butterfly.

(First, let’s get a simple list of easy things in day to day life that build writing foundational skills – things you don’t need a blog link for)

• Letting kids dress themselves
• Zipping up jacks
• Play dough
• Lacing beads
• Craft projects (painting, coloring, etc)
• Playing at a playground or park
• Climbing
• Building with blocks or bricks
• Puzzles
• Digging in dirt or sand
• Feeding self and using utensils

(Click the photos for full descriptions of the activities and supply lists)

Toy Parade: Crossing the midline, fine motor movements, visual motor skills

Save the Pups: Arm and grip strength, visual motor skills, crossing the midline

Working on a Vertical Surface: Arm strength, body strength, concentration

Pouring Station: Visual motor skill, arm and grip strength, crossing the midline

Threading Station: Fine motor skills, pincer grasp, visual motor skills, hand strength

Animal Rescue: Grip strength, motor skills, concentration

Match & Glue: Grip strength, body stability, visual motor skills

Dot Sticker Line-up: Visual motor skill, fine motor skills, concentration

Baking Soda Bin: Fine motor skills (pincer), grip strength

Color Mixing Bin with Peri Bottles (yes, peri bottles): Grip strength, body stability, visual motor skills

Painting Toys: Concentration, grip and arm strength, body stability

Puzzle Unwrap: Fine motor skills, visual memory, crossing the midline

Do you need to be teaching your preschooler how to write letters? No.

We don’t need to be pushing children into this skill earlier – and earlier is usually not developmentally appropriate and can lead to this being a very frustrating skill.

Is it possible some kids will pick up a pencil at an early age and start writing? Absolutely. Just like some kids will pick up a bike early and are like “I got this.” But also, early bike riders aren’t better bike riders as adults… and early writers aren’t better writers. They’re just early.

What can you do to help your child be ready for writing? Get those foundational skills brewing. Give them every chance to work with their hands, to build grip and arm strength, to reach, stretch, manipulate, and create. Make their whole body development the focus rather than zooming in on one skill (like printing letters).

Support their future in handwriting with opportunities to grow and develop at their own pace – no need to rush this skill. In fact, it’s a great skill to let kids really take their time on.

References:

Almon, J, & Miller, E. (2011). The crisis in early education: a research-based case for more play and less pressure. College Park, MD: Alliance for Childhood.

Faugno, R. S. (2019). Pediatric prewriting stroke developmental stages: Are expectations evolving beyond the child’s natural capabilities? Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, & Early Intervention, 13(1), 19–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/19411243.2019.1647811

Susie Allison, B.A. Elementary Education

Author and Creator

Susie Allison is the creator of Busy Toddler and has more than 1.6 million followers on Instagram. A former teacher and early childhood education advocate, Susie’s parenting book “Busy Toddler’s Guide to Actual Parenting” is available on Amazon.

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

Mars) 9000 9000 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.

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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.

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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.

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Chalk In the age of the Internet and technology, more and more parents are wondering if their child will need handwriting skills and why this is given such attention in schools. We asked Anna Polishchuk, clinical and perinatal psychologist, child neuropsychologist, author of the educational project "Children Ready for the Future", to talk about the importance of writing and proper preparation for it. Knowing how to write is really important Written language is not just the ability to write letters. This is a complex integrative process. When we master writing, almost all areas of the brain work at the same time - and they do it in a coordinated manner, creating a whole functional system. The visual areas are responsible for reproducing and retaining in the working memory the image of a word and the image of a letter; auditory - for working with a phoneme. That is why, when children first begin to write, they pronounce each word aloud. The motor and deep parts of the brain are responsible for sufficient muscle tone, correct subtle movements, and jewelry switching between positions. And of course, all this is accompanied by an analysis and search for semantically suitable words. Can you imagine how many tasks a child's brain solves per second when it prints a letter? We are not just learning to write, we are creating a new functional system, linking all parts of the brain into a single network. The brain changes even morphologically. Try to do old Russian calligraphy - and you will feel how much concentration, tone, and attention it requires. If schools replace writing with typing on a keyboard, this will certainly facilitate the learning process, but this will affect the cognitive functions of children. When to start preparing Beautiful writing largely depends on how ready the child's hand is. We are talking here about the general tone, and about the posture that the child takes for writing, and, of course, about motor skills. It is rare to find a clumsy child with good handwriting - because problems with gross motor skills drag along and difficulties with fine motor skills. Photo: Juriah Mosin / Shutterstock Preparing the hand for writing naturally starts at birth: even just playing in the sandbox, the child develops motor skills. Jumping, jumping rope games, hopscotch, cycling, rope parks contribute to the same goal. Today, the idea of ​​early - anticipatory - development is popular among parents, but there is simply no point in actively putting a child at prescription before 4–5 years old. By this age, it is enough to be able to hold a pencil correctly. A child is ready to learn to write if he has the following skills: circular amplitudes of the brush, including the ability to draw wavy lines; the ability to draw straight solid lines: first vertical and horizontal, then diagonally; the ability to draw broken lines in different directions (hatching). How to get interested in writing Writing is a complex integrative function, and in order to generate interest in it, it is important to understand where it starts. Written speech is always the transmission of information. From a child to an adult. And it starts with a drawing! When a child scribbles, brings sloppy colored pictures to mom, or gives dad scribbled paper, he is trying to share his thoughts. Adults need to encourage this. The child encodes his words in lines and dashes, tries to convey an idea through an image - this is an analogue of the encryption system in a letter: we also encode the meaning in letters. Therefore, it is very important to initiate drawing. Offer pencils, crayons, paints and brushes, try to draw with your fingers, put dots on paper, traces of palms, learn to color, paint over, depict the first "cephalopod" men. Often today's children do not like to draw because of problems with general tone or its asymmetry. Gadgets, physical inactivity, incorrect posture - all this affects health, it is difficult for children to hold the pressure of a pencil. Children love to be adults, and this is the whole secret of learning: write yourself! Leave notes, write stories, read to each other and show vivid emotions when the child repeats after you. Praise for trying. Tell us how you like to receive colorful notes and hang beautiful drawings on the refrigerator. Create a gallery and save all the creations of children! Show that you care about what the child wants to convey to you in this image! All this is the basis of written speech. The pleasure of drawing gradually turns into the pleasure of writing letters, and then words. If a child does not have such a desire by the age of 5–6, return to the previous levels: draw and make scribble notes. How can I help my child learn to write? First of all, in a natural way, through everyday life. Cooking, cleaning, washing - it's all about motor skills. It would be useful to include drawing, passing mazes, playing with geoboards and mosaics, and graphic dictations in your daily activities. Photo: sakkmesterke / Shutterstock You can also use special training aids for orientation on a sheet and in the image of a letter. For example, KUMON notebooks "Spatial Thinking" and "Learning to write block letters of the Russian alphabet." The latter has several advantages: the child learns to write letters from simple to complex; train different directions and amplitudes of the hand; in each exercise there are landmarks - arrows, with the help of which it is easier to remember the spelling and the vector of hand movement when writing. But many teachers at school face this: children write letters in the opposite direction, against gravity, or mirror. We must not forget an important criterion: such benefits should be offered to a child only when he is already approaching the age of learning to read, that is, closer to 5 years. Learn more Words that end with l for kindergarten Essentials for working with young children Wolf dressed as grandma Poem with rhyming words for kids Following 2 3 step directions worksheets Sight word games for free Things to teach children How to teach phonics for kindergarten Emergent readers age Color blue activities for toddlers Night time stories for kids