In order to be ready to write, children need to have developed hand skills. This means they need to have the strength and dexterity to handle, and control, small objects with their hands. But, they will also need to develop the muscles in their forearm and upper body to provide the strength and stability that will allow them to use their hands to manipulate and control writing instruments.

Eye-hand coordination is another pre-writing skill, as is the ability to process sensory information. The brain coordinates tactile and movement sensations as a child is writing, which allows him to make changes as needed to maintain muscle control. One of the best ways to prepare your child for the exciting world of writing is to provide lots of opportunity to work with Play-Doh and clay which helps develop finger and hand strength and control.

When they are playing with these materials, children are squeezing and kneading, poking and pinching, rolling and pressing – all excellent strength building movements. For this activity, we talked about the letter L. We initially learned a song about this letter, which included silly words that reinforced the sound that L makes. We then discussed a variety of words that began with this letter. Lastly, we stuck plastic “leaves” into green Playdoh. As they shaped their Playdoh into the letter O, they were strengthening the small muscles required for writing. The muscles in the palm of our hands control the movements of the thumb and fingers. When a child has developed strong fine motor skills, he is able to control the thumb and fingers individually, rather than just grasping items with his entire fist as an infant does.

Dot-to-dots (connect the dots) are excellent vehicles to encourage pre-writing skills, number order or letter recognition and problem solving. To incorporate this into our week of learning about the letter G, we created  the letter G using stickers as our “dots” and crayons to form straight lines from one dot to another. Each point enabled your little one to create their Gs correctly (from top to bottom, and left to right). Working on dot-to-dots teaches children number order and helps with counting.

Little ones may need a little help, but as they get older, completing this type of pre-writing activity all by themselves is a great confidence booster. Dot-to-dot games are also wonderful for improving hand-eye co-ordination. There’s a lot of concentration that goes into completing a dot-to-dot! Visual motor control is developed through this type of task. In addition to these benefits, doing dot-to-dot activities really helps improve handwriting skills and are a valuable pre-writing teaching tool. Children learn how to create shapes, focus their writing implement and learn how much pressure to apply to the paper.

All too often, young children are given writing tools to use before they are ready for them. Young children from three to five years of age use their hands to explore and learn about the environment and themselves. By developing good hand skills and other pre-writing skills young children will be prepared for the next step, which is writing. Working on hand skills will also assist older children who are experiencing writing difficulties. This week we have been learning about the letter G, and words associated with it. We not only discussed the words, but the different sounds that G makes. In our discussions, your budding writers were also asked to use their own thinking minds to come up with words that have any G sound in it. For this activity, we discussed the “ga” sound that G makes. We then conversed about what goo is then brainstormed to make up silly words, such as “Goo Goo Grandma, Goo Ghost Gaga”. Following this, your child used the small muscles in their hands to create “goo” that they eventually scooped and pinched to place onto a taped letter G. Doing so created a visual representation that aided their understanding.