A lot of activities help in the development of fine motor and writing skills, including weight bearing on the hands, postural control and shoulder stability, and muscle development. There are also many components of fine motor skills, some of which are, development of the arches of the hands, the thumb and its webspace, separation of the two sides of the hand, which helps with in-hand manipulation, bilateral integration, and the development of hand and finger strength.

This activity required your budding writers to fill in different colored circles with a crayon. Holding a crayon is self-corrective, which means that there is only one way to grasp it properly, Because we are continuing to promote the tripod grasp, we are constantly doing activities to develop this.

Your little ones were also directed to form concentric circles, which aided the progression of hand strength and finger grip. Lastly, they were given five different crayons to match the five different circles on their papers, which involved significant pre-math skills, such as recognizing visual patterns, sorting objects, and one-to-one correspondence.

Many children feel that practicing handwriting is a chore, an unwanted burden and something they dislike spending time on. With all the technology and electronic devices we have today, it almost seems like handwriting is becoming irrelevant. In our class, it isn’t. There are several ways to form letters, and in our class, we learn to construct them properly without even using a pencil! As your children are introduced to letter formation, they benefit most from a hands-on approach using manipulatives. Even before children can properly grasp a pencil they can practice this way and get a feel for the way a letter should be formed. Miss Carrie models the correct formation with the children and then lets them explore and in essence “create” letters. For this particular activity, we practiced creating letter Ls with Playdoh and straws. Each child poked straws into the Playdoh to create the letter L.

Practicing writing doesn’t mean you have to sit at a table. Many younger children are resistant to sitting and practicing. Those same children may delight in writing in dirt with a stick while playing outside. You’d be surprised at how much more fun writing is when you simply do it at a different time or place than expected. Try it!

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.