Are you a teacher or a concerned parent? 🤔 Then you must know some pre-writing activities for your little ones to encourage them. This will not only help them to grow but also will open many paths for them 😌.
Most kids do not begin learning to write until they are 4 or 5. However, it’s never too late to begin discovering your passion for writing! ✍️
Best Pre-writing activities for your little one
Even if your kid isn’t yet able to form letters on their own, you may utilize these preschool pre-writing exercises to help them develop into excellent writers.❤️
Play dough
An excellent pre-writing activity is a playdough. Kids’ fine motor abilities are enhanced as they tug, roll, flatten, and mold the dough. Dexterity is also enhanced by this activity.📍
Utilise tools like molding kits, cutters, and loose pieces to get maximum benefit out of this exercise. Browse various playdough ideas online and have fun making them with your kids to take this pastime to the next level ♥️ .
Water Painting
The preschoolers can use this activity to sharpen their minds as well as skills. Kids can dip their fingertips in water and then paint their fingers on a flat surface.
They can carry out this task with either a single hand or both hands. When they’re done, kids should pull out the extra water off their fingertips and observe how it drips down onto the surface in the form of droplets 💧.
Creating art with Crafts
For kids who adore cars, painting using toy cars is a terrific idea. They attract their attention quite well with the tracks they make with paint. As your youngster steers the vehicle, you could also add a crayon and let them sketch 😉 🎨.
Drawing on Boxes
Children can learn how to make different shapes through this activity. They can make drawings on an object of any shape or form with their fingertips, hands, or feet. You may apply a black marker or color the spaces between the dotted lines.📦
Cutting Activities
Children’s coordination as well as fine motor abilities are developed by cutting and carving with scissors✂️.
Let them skillfully cut and clip any shapes that they prefer throughout some sessions. Then, you can sketch shapes with various outlines or corners and have them cut 📐out the designs on subsequent days.
Scoop and Pour
Set up two urns. Fill the containers with some grain, sand, or another substance🫗. Then, instruct your kid to move some of the grain or sand by taking some out of one container and dumping it into the other.
Your child can consolidate his or her hands and build hand power through this pre-writing activity 💯.
Ball throwing
A ball can be thrown🥎 and caught to build arm power, work the shoulders and elbows, and develop wrist flexibility. When kids eventually begin writing, these big motions will help 🙃.
Q-tip painting
By coloring with a Q-tip, you can practice the pincer grasp. Kids adore this activity, and it allows you to create lovely artwork! Printable Q-tip paintings are entertaining and excellent for developing fine motor skills. ✨️
Q-Tip Worksheets Materials: You only need paint that is washable and Q-tips to color these printables! Allow your child to use swabs of cotton as paintbrushes to color in each summer-themed image.🖼
Lacing
You can purchase lacing cards or make your own using card stock or foam sheets like we did when lacing hearts or crowns. It’s incredibly beneficial for developing fine motor skills!🎭
Salt Tray drawings
Your youngster can practice writing ✍️ the alphabet with their fingertips or a little paintbrush 🖌 by using salt trays.
Your youngster may find it soothing and comforting to run their index fingers across the salt as they form letters. To make the salt even more interesting to study with, add a few droplets 💦 of food coloring or essential oil.
Cinnamon and Sugar writing
Who doesn’t adore the scent of sugar and cinnamon? Additionally, it makes a tasty toast topping and is helpful for learning.
Create this easy sugar scribbling project to engage your child’s senses of touch and scent. Your youngster can make letter shapes out of white sugar and a little bit of cinnamon using their fingertips.✏️
Pushing Beads into playdough
Your kid will adore being able to make letters out of playdough and beads. Simply press the playdough onto an even lid, smooth it out, and have your preschooler trace the letter with it.
Then, by picking up the tiny beads to trace the alphabet, they can practice their fine-motor abilities.💥
Shaving Cream writing
Be prepared for a little mess; this will happen! The fact that kids are genuinely asked to obtain their fingers dirty with shaving cream will delight 😊 your child.
This is a sensory exercise that kids will probably engage in for hours on end. and by applying shaving cream to your shower screen, you may maintain it clean. Alternatively, you could use a brush for shaving and shaving cream to paint the words on your shower 🚿 screen or bathroom mirror😉.
Blackboard paint with water
It is entirely possible to learn to form letters with water. All you’ll need for this is a blackboard, some water, and your fingers. Children may use a paintbrush to show their zill and determination 🙏.
Squishy Bags
Learning about letters can be a lot of fun with squishy bags. Fill a ziplock bag with a couple of large globs of children’s acrylic paint. To prevent messes, tape the bag shut. 🎒
Motivate your child to place the bag on the floor and use their index finger to put pressure on it, pushing the paint to the side to create shapes and letters. They’ll enjoy the soft texture, and it gives their fingers a fantastic workout. 😍
Sandpaper Letters
Create a set of letters out of sandpaper. Sandpaper is cut into letter forms, and each is attached to a piece of plywood. Your child can take their time experiencing the texture of the letter as they trace it with their finger.
Alternately, practice writing letters by laying a piece of paper over a letter-sized piece of sandpaper and using crayons to trace over the uneven letters.✉️ 💓
Ice painting
What young child doesn’t enjoy painting? And it’s a success if you can produce that artwork using a handmade recipe to accomplish it jointly. Why not let your preschooler draw the alphabet on the pavement after your ice painting sticks have dried? 🤨🤗
Chalk Rainbow writing
Go outside and lightly form the written word (or group of letters) you’d like for your kid to trace on the pavement with an object of white chalk. If you want to design a rainbow🌈 letter then use different shades of pencil ✏️.
Write in Corn meals
This is a lot of fun! Simply pour flour, sugar, or cornmeal onto a tray. Then permit your kid to draw letters or other shapes using their fingers✌️. Try out a writing instrument after using your fingertips to write. Encourage using the utensil with the tripod grip.😎
Tweezers
Transferring things with tweezers or tongs is a simple fine-motor exercise. You can try this particular one even as a toddler! I adore the skunk tweezer we discovered at a nearby educational supply store.💞
Clothespins
It requires a lot of energy to open a clothespin. I adore practicing using clothespins with count and clip papers. A clothespin is then placed on the right number after the youngster counts the items on the card.✌️💥
Scrunching Papers
Building hand strength by just crumpling papers into a ball is quite effective! Newspaper, paper towels, wrapping sheets, and plain paper are all acceptable options. Who among children doesn’t enjoy throwing paper balls?📃
Droppers
Just give your youngster a glass containing water and have them practice using a dropper. He switched all of the water from one container to the other after I dyed our water with food coloring. 🥳
The child’s hand will become stronger as a result of the squeezing movement, which is also excellent for hand-eye coordination. This is a fun workout for kids too!
Pom-poms
Fill the bowl with the pom-poms. Place the clothespin and muffin pan close by.
Ask your youngster to place the pom-poms in an available hole in the cupcake tray using the clothespin. To make sure they learn the proper method for grasping the clothespin by not getting pinched, you may need to show it first.♦️
Dot- pictures
Give your kid permission to dip his or her finger in the colors and then dab it on their paper. They are free to create any pattern they like, whether it be an image of a bouquet or simply a collection of colored dots.🎐
They can try with novel dotting techniques, such as making huge and small dots or dotting with both sides of their fingers. They can observe the results of mixing various paint colors.🌈
Rainbow lines
Place a sticker close to the paper’s edge. Then, from the tape to the opposite side of the paper, draw a gentle arch with the pencil. Last but not least, add the final badge at the very end of your queue. The stickers stand in for your child’s beginning and end.
The paper should then be taped to a wall so that your youngster can stand and sketch. Teach children how to draw a rainbow by tracing the arch with a crayon or colored pencil.🌈
Copycat
Fill the tray with a tiny coating of salt or sand. Divide the sand in half by drawing a straight line along the center of it with your finger. Both your child’s and your drawing areas are now available.♦️
Request a drawing from them for their portion of the board. Then, attempt to duplicate their drawings on your side of the board. When you’re done, have your child compare the two images and search for variations.❤️
Sensory Trays
Pre-writing Sensory Trays. Fill a tray with salt, rice, shaving cream, and other materials. Encourage the kid to practice using their finger to ‘write’ straight, curved, diagonal, and horizontal lines.✌️💥
Stickers on lines
Children in preschool like stickers! On a piece of paper, draw some horizontal, vertical, and straight lines.👀
Place stickers across the lines with the kid’s assistance. This exercise helps students enhance their fine motor abilities in addition to teaching them pre-writing strokes.🖌
Erasing the lines
Another project to teach kids about preparing strokes and practicing fine motor skills is provided here. On a whiteboard or chalkboard, draw lines. A little sponge can be used by the youngster to remove the lines.🎊
Create lines and shapes
Making lines and forms using various instruments or materials is another concept for preschoolers’ pre-writing exercises. To make the lines and forms, try using pipe cleaners, thread, or wax strings. 🏆
If you don’t have pipe cleaners, search around your home or school for other things you can use, such as jar lids for rings or wooden spoons for lines.🎗🎏
Writing on a friend back
Beware! This one might cause a lot of laughter. Children can draw on the backs of their buddies. They can draw lines upon their own accord thighs or palms.
Pre-writing Worksheets
Pre-writing worksheets are widely available both online as well as classrooms. These are excellent tools for teaching your youngster pre-writing skills.
Some pre-writing worksheets, such as this one with an ocean theme, only feature strokes. Others include tracing lines embedded within the illustrations, like these Spring egg pre-writing practice printables.✌️
Simple maze
Easy mazes for preschoolers, in my opinion, are a terrific approach to help children practice their pre-writing strokes. Start with straightforward mazes before progressing to more challenging ones.🖌🧿
Match and connect and images
With stickers or a downloadable activity page, you may create your own matching and connect game. Make sure you have both of each sticker before adding them to an item of paper. ✉📃🏆
While the game resembles a maze, it tests children’s ability to first identify the matching images before connecting them with a line. Ask them to resist touching any other photos on the page.✨️
Fine motor Crafts
Preschoolers can benefit greatly from fine motor activities. My fine motor printed projects were created specifically to help kids practice their fine motor skills. Children can trace an array of lines with dots on each assignment.🎊🏅
Bubble wrap writing
Who among children doesn’t adore bubble wrap? Have the kids practice their fine-motor abilities by finger-tracing the letters after you’ve drawn their given names on the bubble wrap. After doing this enjoyable exercise, they may pop the bubbles.
Beads and Pipe Cleaners
This exercise, where kids weave beads onto pipe cleaners, is another one to improve their hand-eye coordination. They will grasp the beads with their pincer grip, laying the groundwork for holding crayons and writing.❤️✨️
Learning with Song
Children also like dancing and music. To genuinely involve them in the learning process, give them chances to stand up and walk around. They are practicing straight and curvy lines while swaying to the music throughout this activity!🎵
Masking Tape Letters
Children are always interested in activities involving scissors and tape because they enjoy playing with the tools and exploring the tape’s stickiness. 😲
Write your kids’ names in practice using a mirror as well as masking tape. What do you find most pleasurable about this pastime? Simple cleanup!
Sticker line up
With the help of stickers, children will practice drawing shapes on paper while honing their pincer grip as they hold the stickers to apply to the paper.
Give children the opportunity to use the stickers to construct their own shapes after they’ve traced the forms on the paper.💥💫
Play-Doh and Drinking straws
On a flat surface, flatten out a medium-sized piece of play dough. Then, on the flattened surface, make a letter using a sharp object. (Ensure that the note is big enough to be seen even when straws are within.)
Segment plastic straws by one inch. Let children use the colorful straw segments to “trace” the letters.🎐
Dot makers
Dot markers are used by students to practice writing mechanics and get accustomed to the curves and angles of letters. To get twelve sheets of pre-writing dot markers activities for free, click the link above.🏅🧩
Cotton swabs and Painting
This is an enjoyable game to help kids practice their hand-eye coordination and master the crucial pencil grip.🏆💞
LEGO Blocks
Blocks! Young children adore making and building with them. Utilize their inventiveness by using these free-accessible letter cards.🧿
Glitter glue
Any preschooler should be able to master pre-writing lines before understanding letter structures. Download any preschool practice project for pre-writing lines with glitter glue.🎀♣️
Squeeze bottles
Allow kids to trace characters on cards using a plastic squeezing bottle filled with salt or sugar. This will help them to think and craft their own shape.🧩
Rainbow Tray
Kids adore this resource, and it’s so easy to build! Simply adhere the colored tissue paper to the bottom of a transparent plastic dish in the shape of a rainbow. 💓🧩
The colors below are revealed as the children trace lines as well as letters in the filled-in sand. The tray is positioned on the exterior before a light table in the image above, which gives the activity an additional layer of enjoyment.🎭🀄
Masking tape
You are always concerned for your little ones. To make them better 👍 writers follow this activity to encourage.
A clear surface plus a roll of colored masking tape makes it a fun writing center exercise.
Magnet boards
Let your kids trace the letters on a magnet board using magnets once you’ve taped them there. In the aforementioned illustration, the teacher turned the characters into roads, as well as the pupils navigated them with their car magnets.🧲
Buttons
Preschoolers will love using colorful buttons to make patterns, wavy lines, and squiggles, with wavy lines. And while they’re at it, they’ll be developing their skills!🧿
Cutting
Children can practice their fine motor capabilities and control by cutting and snipping things with scissors. Give your kids lots of chances to practice their cutting techniques with Play-Doh, twine, paper, and card stock.
Broken crayon drawing
Try breaking a crayon in halves and handing it to your kid to use when they are drawing at home.
Using a small, chunky tool for sketching helps kids to grip the tool closer to its tip and use a hold that is much more similar to the proper way to use a pen, which may sound silly.🖍️📏
Conclusion
These easy and affordable techniques for integrating letter learning with fun and enjoyment are quick and simple to carry out.
You’ll be astounded at how open your preschooler is to trying out exciting new concepts and activities if you’re imaginative in the way you approach themes with them.🎆📌
Finally, releasing some of the strain and giving them some time for employment on pre-writing exercises without the stress of having to write letters right away can be helpful.
All the suggested pre-writing exercises in this post can be done with kids who are in school if you’re searching for a strategy to help their handwriting skills even if they are all geared towards preschoolers.✨️🎁
I’m a former teacher (and mother of Two Childs) with a background in child development. Here to help you with play-based learning activities for kids. ( Check my Next startup Cledemy.Com)