Writing practice for preschoolers

Pre-Writing Activities for Preschoolers - WeAreTeachers

Pre-writing activities for preschoolers not only help our youngest learners learn the shape and structure of the letters in the alphabet, but they also serve a number of other functions as well. According to education blogger Lisette, from Where Imagination Grows, pre-writing practice teaches directionality in writing, encourages fine muscle development and coordination, and also helps students process sensory information critical to the writing process.

Here are 22 super fun, easy-to-make activities that your preschoolers will love!

1. Squishy Bags

Source: Learning4kids

All you need to make these awesome sensory bags is resealable zipper storage bags, flour, water, and food coloring. Kids can use cotton swabs or their fingers to draw shapes, lines, and letters on the bag.

2. Bubble Wrap

Source: Coffee Cups and Crayons

What a great way to recycle all that leftover bubble wrap! Simply write letters on sheets of bubble wrap with a Sharpie and let kids pop their way to letter recognition.

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3. Play-Doh Snakes

Source: In My World

Kids can’t resist the sensory lure of Play-Doh! For this activity, kids can roll small balls of dough into long snakes and form letters by bending and joining the snakes together.

4. Play-Doh and Drinking Straws

Source:  KidActivitiesBlog

Flatten out a medium-size piece of Play-Doh on a flat surface. Then use a sharp object to draw a letter on the flattened area. (Make sure that the letter is large enough to be easily recognizable when filled with straws.) Cut plastic straws into one-inch segments. Let kids “trace” the letters with the colorful straw segments.

5. Dot Markers

Source: 3 Dinosaurs

Students use dot markers to practice the mechanics of writing and get used to the angles and curves of letters. Click on the link above to download 12 free pages of pre-writing dot marker worksheets.

6. Cotton Swabs and Paint

Source: Lessons Learnt Journal

This is a fun activity to help kids work on their fine motor skills and get the hang of the all-important pencil grip.

7. LEGO Blocks

Source:  Wildflower Ramblings

Blocks! Young kids can’t get enough of building and creating with them. Put their creative energy to good work with these free printable letter cards.

8. Shaving Cream

Source: Mess for Less

This classic activity is a great starting place for pre-writers. All you need is a tray and a can of shaving cream.

9. Glitter Glue

Source: Growing Hands-On Kids

Pre-writing lines are important building blocks for any preschooler to master before learning letter formations. Download this glitter glue pre-writing line practice for preschoolers activity.

10. Beads

Source: Artsy Momma

Just like the one above, this activity builds fine motor skills that your young students need to begin writing. Instead of using glitter glue, though, students use inexpensive pony beads (found at any craft store) to follow the lines.

11. Sand Tray

 Source: Our Little House in the Country

One of the simplest activities to put together for your students to practice pre-writing is a sand tray. Kids can use their fingers or an unsharpened pencil to practice writing. As an alternative to sand, you can fill your tray with salt, flour, cornmeal, or rice.

12. Squeeze Bottle

Source:: Playdough to Plato

Fill a plastic squeeze bottle with salt or sugar and let students trace letters on cards.

13. Rainbow Tray

 Source: Where Imagination Grows

This resource is so simple to make, and kids love it! Simply tape colored tissue paper in a rainbow pattern to the bottom of a clear plastic tray. Fill it with sand, and as the kids trace lines and letters, the colors below are revealed. The image above shows the tray on top of a light table, which adds another dimension of fun to the activity!

14. Masking Tape

Source: And Next Comes L

A roll of colored masking tape and a clear surface make this a fun center activity at writing time.

15. Magnet Board

Source: Days with Gray

Tape letters onto a magnet board and let your little ones trace them with magnets. In the example above, the teacher made the letters into roads, and the students drove their car magnets along them.

16. Lacing Cards

Source: Teaching Mama

Grasping a string between tiny fingers and threading the end through the holes in a lacing card is great fine motor practice for preschoolers. It also begins to build muscle memory for holding a pencil properly.

17. Buttons

Source: Learning4Kids

Preschoolers will have so much fun creating patterns, swirls, squiggles, and zig-zags with colorful buttons. And they’ll be building skills while they’re at it!

18. Sticker Line Up

Source: Busy Toddler

Preschoolers need to use a pinching motion, which builds fine motor skills, to peel sticker dots off the page. Then, they use hand-eye coordination to place each sticker on the drawn line. This activity would be perfect for a writing or free time station.

19. Fingerprint Writing

Source: Happy Toddler Playtime

Some kids may not like to get their fingers this messy, but others will adore it! For this activity, you will need poster paper and a palette of washable ink. Draw letters, shapes, and lines on a clean piece of paper. Then, show kids how to dip their pointer finger onto the ink pad, then follow the lines dot by dot.

20. Clothespin Clipping

Source: Teaching Mama

Using a clothespin takes a lot of grip strength. This image shows a student using a clothespin to choose the correct answer to a number problem, but any activity that involves clipping will help them build the fine motor skills required for writing.

21. Cutting

Source: Play of the Wild

Cutting and snipping activities with scissors are excellent ways for children to practice fine motor skills and control. Give your students lots of opportunities to practice their cutting skills with paper, string, card stock, even Play-Doh!

22. Scrunching Paper

Source: Gympanzees

Scrunching paper into a ball is great for building hand strength. Let your students use computer paper, newspaper, tissue paper, or wrapping paper. Then play a game of paper ball tag!

What are your favorite pre-writing activities for preschoolers? Share in the comments below.

Plus, check out these amazing Sensory Table Activities.

15 of the Best Pre-Writing Activities for Preschoolers

This can be a fun indoor or outdoor activity, using either a sand tray or a sandbox to complete. Get the sand wet and let children use their fingers or sticks to write out the alphabet. A fun twist is using food coloring to make colorful sand! An alternative to sand you might have on hand is flour.

Learn more: Scholastic

If you are looking for fine motor activities to help with pre-writing, look no further. This activity helps your child practice both fine motor and pre-writing skills as they manipulate the playdough and draw letters into it.

Learn more: Heidi Marie Scarsella

What kid doesn't love bubble wrap? After you draw the children's names on the bubble wrap, have them practice their fine motor skills by tracing the letters with their fingers. And then when they are done with this fun activity, they can pop the bubbles!

Learn more: Coffee Cups and Crayons

Using laminated card stock, children practice their hand-eye coordination using playdough to shape letters. This is great for building both pre-writing and fine motor skills. This lovely pre-writing activity is great because the kids feel like they are playing, but they are actually learning!

Learn more: Child Care Land

Another activity to strengthen children's hand-eye coordination is this activity that has them string beads onto pipe cleaners. They will use their pincer grip to hold the beads, which sets the foundation for them holding pencils and writing.

Learn more: Teaching Mama

The Kindergarten Connection offers many free printable worksheets for pre-writing. Children will learn to grip the pencil while they practice the skill of tracing. After, they can practice their fine motor skills even more by coloring in the characters (and staying within the lines!) on the worksheets.

Learn more: The Kindergarten Connection

This paper scrunching activity is great because it helps students practice multiple skills. This fun sensory activity will have them working on their hand strength (which later will aid them in writing) while also practicing fine motor skills. If you use colored tissue paper, at the end they will have completed a fun art project!

Learn more: Child Care Land

Decorating pavement with chalk drawings is a favorite activity of preschoolers. Little do they know, they are practicing their fine motor skills, which are the building blocks for their prewriting skills while doing so! Have them focus on shapes first, and then move on to letters and numbers!

Learn more: Occupational Therapy Fox C6

11. Learning with Song

Another thing kids love is music and dancing. Give them opportunities to get up and move their bodies to really get them engaged in the learning process. This activity has them practicing straight and curved lines while bopping to a beat!

Learn more: Jack Hartmann Kids Music Channel

This activity for building strength in children's hands sets the stage for writing success later on. It also allows them to explore the world around them while using their fine motor skills. This is great to put into your open-ended activities, as you can use tweezers to have children do many things--like grab certain color beads out of containers or pick up macaroni noodles scattered on the sidewalk!

Learn more: Tinkergarten

13. Masking Tape Letters

Activities with scissors and tape always engage children, as they love to manipulate the scissors and the stickiness of the tape. Use a mirror and masking tape to practice writing children's names. The best part about this enjoyable activity? Easy clean-up!

Learn more: And Next Comes L

This activity for preschoolers will have them practicing tracing shapes with stickers while at the same time practicing their pincer drip while they grip the stickers to place on the paper. After they have traced the shapes on the paper, give them the freedom to create their own shapes using the stickers.

Learn more: Busy Toddler

Follow the link above to learn how to make a push-pin maze. Children will practice pencil grip while they navigate their way through these fun mazes.

Learn more: Planning Playtime

Teaching children to write

Today you can hardly find a person who would not know how to write. But the memory of the times when people not only did not know how to do this, but did not have the slightest literacy at all, is still fresh. However, even among the vast majority, there were always those who were trained in both writing and literacy. It was to such people that honest people came to make notes, read documents and perform other equally important deeds and tasks. But more interesting is that people who can only write or only read were considered semi-literate.

It's the same now - to be truly literate, you need to be able to read, count and write, and do it all correctly.

At present, literacy can be called one of the indicators of the development and education of a person in general. Many even say that it is on literacy that personal development in general is built. But why is literacy, and in particular literacy in writing, so important for both children and adults?

Contents:

1. Why you need to be able to write
2. First things to take care of
3. Learning steps
4. Additional recommendations
5. Quotes from famous people about letter

Why you need to be able to write

Answering this question, there are several fundamental reasons that speak about the importance of writing:

• First, the ability to write allows people to understand each other through this very writing. When a person says something incorrectly or without knowing how to find words, it is quite difficult to understand him. With a letter, the situation is similar.
• Secondly, the ability to write is a manifestation of respect for the traditions and laws of the Russian language and the people as a whole.
• Thirdly, the ability to write is a serious tool with which you can interact with people.
• Fourth, the ability to write allows you to achieve success in learning, as well as simply get a job or engage in some kind of activity related to writing
• And finally, fifthly, the ability to write allows a person to form a first impression about himself. It's about like appearance - when a person is untidy, with an unwashed head and dirty nails (that is, he writes somehow and makes mistakes even in the simplest words), one gets the impression of him, and when he is well-groomed and looks great (in other words, beautiful and writes well) is completely different.

Thus, the importance of writing skills is very difficult to overestimate. But, naturally, in order for a child to be able to write beautifully, correctly and competently, his education must be dealt with. Yes, it may not be very easy, but it is extremely important. Besides, if you teach your child to read and count, why not teach him to write?

The question of how to do this, many parents ask, while their children are still very small. They are looking for all sorts of ways to teach writing literacy, beautiful handwriting, expanding vocabulary, etc., so that the baby can go to school prepared, achieve great academic success, keep up with classmates, etc. It is for these reasons that from the first years of life, mothers and fathers dilute the daily life of children with various activities and lessons.

In the event that your idea is not a manifestation of ambition or a whim, but a true desire to bring up a healthy, holistic and harmonious personality in your child, the information below is just for you.

Before you start teaching your child to write, you need to pay attention to one very important point. It is with him that we will begin.

First things to take care of

during it, their hands cannot cope with the usual manipulation of a pen or pencil. Even if they want to write something specific, they end up with unknown scribbles. The problem is obvious, although at first glance it may not be noticed. It consists in the fact that the child simply has not developed fine motor skills of the hands, because. his parents didn't work with him. This leads to the need for a visit to a specialist in motor development, as well as the fact that the child will have to "catch up" with the material and try to keep up with peers.

Avoid the above parenting omission, because your baby's development depends on it. In addition, classes for the development of fine motor skills are not at all laborious, and for children in general they are one of the favorite pastimes. In fact, these activities are ordinary games.

Spend time with the benefit of the child, namely:

• Sculpt together with plasticine. Let the child help you prepare something from the dough.
• Play with your baby with small objects (make sure he doesn't put objects in his mouth).
• Play with your child with soft rubber toys (make sure he crushes the toys)
• Stick paper appliqués with your baby.
• Learn origami with your child.
• Draw with your baby and color the pictures.
• Create all kinds of compositions together with clothespins.

So, while having fun with your child, you will contribute to the excellent development of fine motor skills of his hands, and at the same time interact and get to know each other better. As a result, by the time recommended for starting writing lessons, your baby will already be prepared, which means he will be able to learn to write. The learning process itself can be divided into three stages.

Stages of learning

Anyone who wants to teach their child to write must immediately realize that success will require maximum effort and think over their own methodology. But we will talk more about the methods, but for now we will focus on the stages of training.

Three stages in total:

• Preparatory stage
• Block Writing Stage
• Writing phase

The steps presented are the categorization of educators and pediatricians. By the way, according to them, you should not start teaching a child to write before the age of three - this is still very early. But when the baby crosses this threshold, you can gradually proceed. As for the periods, they must be taken into account. Let's consider the issue in more detail.

1

Preparatory period

Writing will not bring any results if the child cannot perform a few simple but very important actions. Based on this, at the first stage, you need to teach the child:

• sit at the table
• Hold a pen or pencil
• Place notebook on table
• Observe the correct posture for writing (the child should not lean too much towards the notebook)
• Correct orientation in space (in particular - the child should not confuse the sides of the notebook sheet)
• Effortlessly focus on the same activity

Among other things, quite developed fine motor skills, which we have already mentioned, can also be included here. More important is also the fact that by the time he begins his learning to write, the child should already know the letters. This, in turn, indicates the need to study the alphabet before starting classes.

As a rule, the preparatory period corresponds to the age of three to five years.

2

The stage of learning to write in block letters

You will know that the preparatory stage was successful by the way your child performs the above actions - each of them should already be familiar to him and just for him. As soon as this happens (in most cases in 5 - 5.5 years), you can safely proceed to the development of printed letters.

Remember: the main task of the second stage is to teach your child how to write in capital and small letters.

3

Learning to write in cursive

In the case of writing in capital letters, the situation is somewhat different. Taking into account the peculiarities (and for children - the complexity) of their writing, it is better to move on to them closer to the school where copybooks are used. Well, or, in extreme cases, at the senior preschool age, i.e. about five or six years old. It all depends on your decision and the desires and abilities of the child.

By organizing the learning process in accordance with these stages, you will make it harmonious, smooth and effective. And having considered the stages of teaching children to write, it will be a high time to talk about the most common mistakes that parents make when they get down to business. Being engaged in the early development of your child, try not to commit them.

Here is a list of major errors:

• Exercising too long (meaning more than twice a day for 15 minutes)
• Criticism of the child, reproaches, comparison, communication in raised tones, etc.
• Lack of work on the errors made
• Pressure on a child (force, threaten, use the method of "deprivation")
• Lack of time for classes (child's unpreparedness for learning)
• Ignoring the suggested steps (skipping the preparatory step, learning capital letters early)
• Formal and serious approach to classes (for the hundredth time we repeat: the best form of education for preschool children is play)
• Too harsh discipline (when a parent takes over the role of a teacher, ceasing to be a parent in the first place)
• Irregular and unsystematic classes

When teaching a child to write, always take into account these common mistakes of parents, build your strategy accordingly and practice self-control for prevention.

And in conclusion of the introductory lesson, we want to give you some more tips that will certainly be useful to you in your future practice.

Additional recommendations

These recommendations were not invented by us, but were compiled by one of the most famous Russian academicians, psychologist, Doctor of Biology, professor and director of the Institute of Developmental Psychology of the Russian Academy of Education - Maryana Mikhailovna Bezrukikh. In her opinion, based on many years of experience, in the process of teaching children to write, the following should be taken into account:

• Writing is one of the most difficult skills to master. It is formed quite slowly, and for a child to master it well, it takes an average of 3 to 4 years.
• Parents should not reinvent the wheel - the most effective methods can be found in specialized literature.
• To this day, copybooks are considered to be a very effective way to train writing skills. Bookstores sell a huge number of copybooks in the most interesting designs and designed for different ages and levels of development of children.
• At the very beginning of teaching a child to write, checkered paper should not be used. It is best to use albums or (in the absence of such) lined notebooks.
• All information presented to the child must be visualized. To do this, you need to show pictures, write examples, give associations, etc.
• If even with a competent approach, for some reason, the child does not learn to cope with the simplest tasks, it is recommended to seek professional help.

This concludes the first lesson. In the second lesson, we will introduce you to the basic principles and the most popular methods used when teaching children to write. After reviewing them, you will know what can be used, and what will be more effective specifically in your case.

As it should be understood, the process of teaching children to write is based not only on a certain methodology, but also on specific general didactic principles.

Therefore, first we will talk about them, and then we will talk about the methods.

Teaching a child to write is a task, albeit difficult, but quite doable, and any responsible parent can do it. The question is rather when to start preschool, because if you start too early, the child may have problems in the future. It is for this reason that the first thing to pay attention to is the development of fine motor skills.

For example, the famous teacher Vasily Sukhomlinsky said that the origins of children's abilities and talents are at the fingertips of children. It is far from a secret that with the development of fine motor skills, the corresponding parts of the brain develop, muscle memory, attention, perseverance are trained, i.e. there is a real preparation for writing. And here you need to "seize the moment" when you need to do everything so that already in the first grade the child can learn more easily.

In the last lesson we started talking about preparing children for learning to write. In the following, we will continue this theme and at the same time move on to the practice of elementary education. As it has already become clear, preparation begins a few years before school. But many parents, in a hurry to quickly start classes, hastily study the methods, but do not pay attention to self-control at all, because. only it allows you to avoid making the most common mistakes. The most important of them is too early start of training.

According to primary school teachers, based on many years of experience, parents should not teach their children to write (especially cursive) at preschool age. And the categoricalness of this opinion, of course, is based on a number of specific reasons: there is only one requirement for this very preschool preparation - that the child knows the alphabet. As for the skill of beautiful writing of letters, everything here - as God puts on the soul - this is not required for "enrollment" in first graders.

But caring parents, in turn, do not want to let the development of their child take its course or shift the responsibility for it onto the shoulders of teachers alone. Therefore, preschool writing classes are far from uncommon. And here we again return to the observations of teachers: it was noticed that children who learned to write at home even before school, when they came to the first grade, often write worse than those who began to master such a difficult skill already at their desks.

The skill of beautiful and literate writing can safely be counted among the indicators of personality development and individual culture of a person. Unfortunately, from birth, no one has the ability to model letters, follow the rules for writing them and not make mistakes. Only the hard work of parents and the child allows you to develop the ability to write grammatically correctly at an early age.

In the preschool period and in the elementary grades, children make many mistakes in writing, and even in those cases when they copy the text from some sample or board, perceiving someone else's speech by ear or expressing their own thoughts. And this, along with teaching children to write in block and capital letters, is another topic that should definitely be considered. We will begin the sixth lesson with a description of the basic principles of teaching children to write competently, and we will continue with methods for teaching children to copy from samples and write from dictation.

Many children cannot understand why it is so important to be literate and write correctly. They calmly write “arel”, “mouse”, “orbuz”, and everything is in order - what difference does it make - “a” or “o” in the word, because it’s already clear to everyone what it is about. Based on this, the first thing to do is to explain to the child the importance of literacy.

Literacy, and in particular - literacy in writing, is today a sign of a person's education. A schoolchild needs to be literate for the reason that there are written assignments and work in all subjects, which means that literacy is always needed. In addition, classmates, and in some cases teachers, often make fun of children who do not know how to write correctly and make fun of them. And who is pleased when he is "poked with his nose" in his own mistakes, and even scoffing at the same time?

A student needs to be able to write essays just as much as the ability to copy texts from a sample, write from dictation, etc. Moreover, this skill is needed even for those who were not awarded by nature with literary talent. Thus, if some children write essays without problems, then it can be very difficult for others. How to behave in such a situation? What is effective parental support?

Lesson 8. Teaching a child to write in foreign languages ​​

For a fulfilling life that opens up many new perspectives and opportunities, it is essential for a modern person to know at least one foreign language. With knowledge of a foreign language, you can enter a university with the appropriate requirements, go to study under a student exchange program abroad, make new acquaintances with people around the world, get a good position in a large international company, etc. And if we take into account the fact that it is best to learn new knowledge at a young age, then a foreign language should be taught even before school, or at least in the first grades.

How to learn to read in a foreign language was discussed in the first block of our course. Now we will continue the topic of foreign languages, but we will consider it in the vein of teaching writing specifically. And as an "experimental" language, we will again take English. The reasons are similar: English is an international language, very popular, in demand and easy enough to learn. So let's go, or as the Americans say: "Let's it!".

Modern life is completely unthinkable without computers. They accompany a person everywhere, from home to a work office, from a coffee machine to a store's cash register. Even without talking about global computerization, it becomes clear that today it is necessary to be able to work with a computer. In many educational institutions (so far mainly in the West, of course), the place of notebooks and pens on school desks has been replaced by laptops. We will also talk about the advantages and disadvantages of introducing computers into the education system on the pages of our intellectual club, but for now we will continue.

Nowadays, even an adult who does not know how to work on a computer is not often met, let alone children. But if it is enough for the middle-aged generation to know basic programs and be able to use the Internet, and grandparents have enough skills to manipulate a push-button cell phone, then modern children need to master the intricacies of user computer science. And one of the basic skills among them is the ability to quickly type on the keyboard.

Famous people quotes about writing

To conclude this introductory lesson, here are some inspiring quotes from famous people about writing: