Written activities for preschoolers

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

5. Bubble Wrap Writing

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

7. Beads and Pipe Cleaners

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

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

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.

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.

Inclusion: how to recognize a child with speech disorders in his written work?

Introduction

The issues of teaching children with speech disorders in the context of the implementation of the Federal State Educational Standard for Primary General Education for Students with Disabilities (FGOS IEO for children with disabilities) [6] are relevant today both for speech pathologists and teachers of general education schools where such children may attend. What should a teacher of a general education school working in conditions of inclusion with children with speech disorders need to know? nine0005

Speech disorders can be variable both in nature and severity; they can affect the development of both oral and written speech.

Disorders in the development of oral speech can affect all components of the speech system - the development of vocabulary, the grammatical structure of speech, the development of its phonetic side - such violations are systemic and therefore they are called general speech underdevelopment (OHP). General underdevelopment of speech can be observed at different ages and have three degrees of severity, so speech therapists distinguish I, II, III levels of OHP. nine0005

In cases of violation of not the entire speech system, but of its individual components - the ability to correctly pronounce and perceive the sounds of speech by ear - the term "phonetic-phonemic violation" (FFN) is used, and in cases of violation of the pronunciation of individual sounds while maintaining the ability to perceive them on hearing - they talk about phonetic disorders in a child (FN).

When there is a violation of communicative behavior - the impossibility or difficulty of the child in the use of quite suitable speech means due to spasms of the muscles of the speech apparatus, such a violation is usually called stuttering. nine0005

As we can see, the composition of the group of children with speech disorders is very heterogeneous, which requires adults to be able to choose an educational route, to determine the proportion of special assistance required by the child. If the chosen educational route does not correspond to the development and learning opportunities of the child, he will fall into a situation of constant failure, which will affect both the “academic” performance and the development of his life competence. From the point of view of a speech therapist, it is not advisable for all children with speech disorders to recommend education in an inclusive education environment, however, parents often give their voice to inclusion without taking due account of the child's abilities and being guided by other considerations. Therefore, in school practice, an inclusive education teacher may encounter children with a variety of speech disorders, and he simply needs to be able to recognize such children - to recognize them in order to help. nine0005

To do this, the teacher needs to know the specific errors that children with speech disorders make when reading and writing and distinguish them from the errors that occur in ordinary children. The Russian scientific school of speech therapy has accumulated extensive experience in the early detection, elimination and prevention of both oral and written speech disorders in children of different ages (R.E. Levina, G.V. Chirkina, E.L. Goncharova, I.N. Sadovnikova, L.N. Efimenkova, T.A. Altukhova, E.N. Russian, etc.). Based on the analysis of the works of these authors, we will present specific errors in writing, which are inextricably linked with violations of the child's oral speech. nine0005

Every child who starts learning to read and write naturally makes mistakes, which is expected and customary for a primary school teacher. Children with speech disorders make, in addition to the usual ones, mistakes of a special kind, which are usually called specific. They are due to the child's previous difficulties in mastering oral speech - its pronunciation side and the lexical and grammatical structure of speech, therefore, specific errors of two types are distinguished: nine0024

Consider each type of error.

Specific errors associated with shortcomings in pronunciation and phonemic hearing of the child

In cases where by the time of learning to read and write the child has not formed the correct pronunciation of sounds, difficulties arise in correlating the sound and the letter - the image of the letter is attached to the incorrect pronunciation of the sound. In other words, the inability to correctly pronounce or hear the sounds of the native language is reflected in reading and writing - the child reads and writes as he speaks. nine0005

In some cases, the sounds delivered by a speech therapist at preschool age may not be sufficiently automated in a child, and with the external well-being of oral speech, the previously existing pronunciation disorder will be reflected in writing and reading. How does it manifest itself?

Phonetic errors

Replacement of letters (in a strong position, out of spelling) with simpler or similar articulations: brush - "mesh"; called - "chewed"; pocket - "kalman", fur coat - "fuba"; aunt - "totushka"; teeth - "teeth". nine0044

These substitutions are not random - the replaced pairs of sounds are similar in place and method of formation. For example: the sounds R and L in the word (karman - kalman) have 4 identical features: both oral, solid, sonorant, lingual-alveolar, and only one feature in which they differ is the method of formation: R - trembling, and L - smychno-passage). It is this difference that the child does not catch and allows substitutions.

Omissions of letters: cases when a child misses a consonant sound in oral speech because he does not pronounce it, which is reflected in writing and reading: pencil - "ka_andash"; cheerful - "weighty".

Phonemic errors

Correct discrimination of sounds by ear, especially acoustically similar pairs (whistling and hissing, hard and soft, deaf and sonorous, etc.) can only be formed on the basis of their correct pronunciation. If the child has not formed the correct pronunciation of the sound or the sounds have been delivered, but the ability to distinguish them by ear has not been worked out, then in the process of studying the letter, a fuzzy, undifferentiated image of the phoneme will be assigned to it, which will be reflected in the corresponding replacements of letters in writing and when reading in strong position, out of orthograms. In their manifestations, these errors will be similar to phonetic errors, but the difference will be that in oral speech the child may not have pronunciation disorders. nine0005

Replacement of letters (in a strong position, out of spelling) with similar in sound (acoustic features):

giraffe - "shiraf" ; heron - "saber" ; overcame - "overcame" ; gold - "soloto" ; cabinet - "zhkaf" .

Errors associated with the lack of formation of phonemic analysis and synthesis

Such errors are due to the fact that the child did not fix the articulatory (pronunciation) image of the sound at the previous stage of speech development, as a result - he poorly distinguishes it from other sounds and does not highlights in the flow of speech. This leads to the fact that when reading and writing, the child skips letters or inserts extra ones, rearranges them. It should be noted that vowel sounds are often skipped, since in the process of pronunciation the child “feels” them the worst. nine0005

Missing letters:

milk - "milk" ; cuckoo - "cuckoo" .

Insert letters:

december - december ; construction - "construction" ; school - "shykola" .

Permutation of letters:

child - "child" ; answer - "ovtet" ; connected - "connected" .

The assignment of all the listed errors to the category of specific ones is primarily due to the fact that they are the result of previous violations of oral speech, but are not related to knowledge of spelling rules and the ability to apply them. In addition, such errors occur regularly, are varied, repetitive, persistent, and cannot be overcome without special assistance. nine0005

Consider writings that contain the types of errors under consideration.

Figure 1. Written work by Anna R., aged 8. Reading and writing disorders caused by FFN.

In this work, first of all, attention is drawn to the replacement of letters by acoustic or articulatory features - there are two such replacements in a short text, which indicates the sufficient persistence of this type of error (Ryzhik - "ryshik" ). What exactly caused this replacement, it will be possible to say more precisely if we check the child’s oral speech: in the case of the existing replacement of [Ж] with [Ш] in oral speech, we can conclude that the replacements are articulatory, phonetic. If there are no problems with pronunciation in oral speech, we can assume a replacement on an acoustic basis. Vowel omission (tail - "hvst" ; At Misha - "At Misha" ) indicates that the girl has not formed phonemic analysis and synthesis, she poorly determines the place, the number of sounds in the word and their sequence.

According to her technical characteristics, the girl's reading is quite good - she reads in whole words, only when reading polysyllabic words does she switch to reading by syllables. In the process of reading, it allows phonetic substitutions for hissing [SHZh SCCH]. The girl has no problems with understanding the meaning of what she read. nine0005

Consider another piece of written work.

Figure 2. A fragment of the written work of Sergei B., 8 years old. Reading and writing disorders caused by FFN.

In this work, omissions and insertions of letters first of all draw attention to themselves. This indicates the lack of formation of phonemic analysis and synthesis: the child finds it difficult to determine the number and sequence of sounds in a word (glass - "staka" , metro - "mtro" , cottage cheese - "cottage cheese" ). In some cases, having correctly determined the number of sounds in a word, the child chooses another letter to designate (bants - "batty" , snowflake - "snowykka" ). As a rule, in such cases, the child chooses an option that is not similar in articulation and acoustic characteristics, but duplicates a letter from the same word.

Specific errors due to insufficient formation of the lexical and grammatical structure of oral speech

Errors of this type most often appear in writing and reading in children, starting from grade 2, when the stage of literacy has already been completed. Most often they are encountered when writing summaries, essays, as well as when performing independent written exercises in which it is required to select related words, antonyms and synonyms that generalize concepts. nine0005

When reading, lexical and grammatical errors are expressed in the incorrect reading of a word or a combination of words - replacing a word when reading according to the meaning, incorrect agreement of words in a sentence in number, gender, case. Despite the fact that the child has a correctly spelled word, word combination or sentence in front of his eyes, he nevertheless reads it with an incorrect ending, an incorrect suffix or prefix, etc., which affects the establishment of semantic dependencies and understanding of the meaning read. How does it manifest itself? nine0005

Incorrect or inaccurate use of the meaning of the word in a self-composed sentence or text:

Tall man, thick log, long way - "big man, big log, long way" ; vegetables - "products" ; cock's comb - "rooster's mane" .

“My grandmother is already big”, “There is a red mane on the rooster's head”, “Mom cooks a salad”, “This is a salad made from products”.

Incorrect use of various forms of word formation:

"Wolf's tail", "Wolf's tail", "Sports accessories", "Fox looked out", "Construction equipment", table leg - "step", rowan leaf - "rowan leaf", "mouse tail", "poplar leaf”, “jumped up”, “washed and cleaned up”, “little house”.

Errors in matching words in a sentence (in number, gender, case):

dreams of a doll”, “flies under the house”, “walks in the house”, “grab the pen”, “two pencils”, “eat with a spoon”, “proud of my mother”, “warm coat”, “went on the road”, “ came from school”, “came out of the corridor”. nine0044

Let's consider written works in which the selected types of errors appear.

Figure 3. Written work by Egor E., 9 years old. Reading and writing disorders caused by OHP (III level).

In this work, there are both errors due to the lack of formation of the lexico-grammatical component of oral speech, and errors due to the lack of formation of the phonetic-phonemic component of oral speech, which indicates reading and writing disorders caused by OHP. nine0005

In this work, there are replacements according to the phonetic principle (clouds - "mother-in-law" , puddles - "lushe" , etc.). The prevailing are the replacement of hissing sounds with each other and the replacements in the group of whistling sounds (porch - "rat" ). Omissions and rearrangements of letters and syllables indicate that the child has not formed phonemic analysis and synthesis (he - "but" , large - "boshi" , strong - "syns" , etc.). The fact that the child has errors due to the lack of formation of the lexical and grammatical component of speech is indicated by a violation of case agreement (voda - “water” , etc.), the use of a plural pronoun instead of a singular pronoun (he is “they”), replacing a proper name with another name (Vaska - “vanya” ).

Let us give a fragment of a written work in which there is an incorrect case agreement of words.

Figure 4. Written work by Nastya G., 8 years old. Reading and writing disorders caused by OHP (III level).

Figure 5. Written work by Kolya P., 8 years old. Reading and writing disorders caused by OHP (level II). nine0005

As can be seen from this work, the child’s language analysis and synthesis are grossly impaired: there are omissions (Pasha - "pash" ), insertions of letters (rain - "rain" ) and syllables, separate spelling of the whole word (droplets - "kapi _ iki" ).

In the work of the child there are substitutions according to the phonetic feature (vitya - "vicha" ), omissions of letters (mushrooms - "gibs" , boys - "machiki" ). Coordination errors are observed in the work, the child does not know the rules for writing proper names, writes prepositions together with a noun (Pasha, Vitya - "pash", "vicha" ; for mushrooms - "bends" ).

It is worth mentioning one more type of errors that are not directly related to oral speech, but sometimes accompany an already large number of errors in children with speech disorders - these are errors associated with the unformed visual perception, visual memory, visual analysis and synthesis – so-called optical errors . They can be observed in all children without exception at the beginning of literacy. This is due to the fact that it is immediately difficult for children to understand the differential differences between letters, which, in fact, consist of repeating sets of elements (ovals, sticks, loops, etc. ), differently located in space (in relation to the upper bottom, left-right). Optical errors in writing and reading are manifested in substitutions of letters with similar elements (for example, printed P, N and I; written t - p, l - m ), in the wrong spatial arrangement of letters (letters E, Z, Z - children write in the wrong direction; replace c - d , since these letters consist of the same elements, differently located in the top-bottom ratio), etc.

So, we have examined the specific errors of written speech associated with a violation of the child's oral speech.

Speech disorders, not eliminated at preschool age, affect writing and reading, affect the child's academic performance, his self-esteem and relationships with peers and adults. Parents, as a rule, try to do something to change the situation at school for the better. However, if the reasons for the child's difficulties were not understood, then the measures taken by the parents may not only not help, but even aggravate the situation. Let's give some examples. nine0005

Nikita L., 15 years old. From the mother's story at a consultative and diagnostic appointment with a speech therapist: they asked about persistent phonemic substitutions of letters in writing, leading to a large number of errors even in the 8th grade, despite the fact that the depth of the content of presentations and essays does not cause any complaints from the teacher, with the teenager copes with mathematics successfully. “You see, my husband and I graduated from universities with honors, Nikita’s sister is in the 5th grade studying “excellently”. There can't be anything wrong with him. What we haven’t done already - even my husband has been working with him every evening for 2 hours: he makes him read The White Guard, and then carefully copy the read text into a notebook for 2 hours. We believe that reading and rewriting good literary texts will help Nikita get rid of such stupid mistakes that have nothing to do with spelling rules. nine0005

The child entered school with a relatively mild, in the opinion of a speech therapist, speech disorder - phonetic-phonemic underdevelopment. However, inadequate pedagogical influence over many years of schooling led to the fact that he not only did not get rid of specific difficulties, but also lost all interest in learning, found himself in difficult relationships with his loved ones, his further fate and continued education cause reasonable concern.

Artem N., 8 years old. Reading and writing disorders caused by OHP (III level). nine0004