Raising Creative Children » early writing http://raisingcreativechildren.com Nurturing creative young minds and wiggly bodies Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:39:17 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Beginning Writing http://raisingcreativechildren.com/beginning-writing/ http://raisingcreativechildren.com/beginning-writing/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 18:02:06 +0000 Lorelei http://raisingcreativechildren.com/?p=1831
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Playing with Playdough Helps Develop Fine Motor Control
When is a child ready to learn to write? When he is ready! That’s the best answer, although not very helpful. You cannot teach a child to write before his or her muscles and coordination are developed enough to hold a pencil, make tiny marks and notice details. Often toddlers are still a bit far-sighted. That’s why, if you want to teach them to read or write, use LARGE LETTERS. For reading, they should be reading flashcards with letters that are at least five inches tall.

Pre-writing activities

To help them develop coordination in their fingers- do lots of the following activities:

  1. stringing beads
  2. lacing cards (sometimes called sewing cards)
  3. puzzles
  4. playdough
  5. coloring
  6. any game or toy with small pieces (supervised, so they don’t put them in their mouth).
Early Writing Activities:

  1. let them scribble with crayons, pencils, pens, markers
  2. help them scribble a series of oval shapes
  3. help them scribble a series of lines – like zig-zags.
  4. make a “sand” alphabet. write the letters in glue, and shake sand or salt on them. When dry, let your child trace the letters with his finger.
  5. help child make letters with play dough. You can print off the letters on the computer, and laminate them. Then child makes play dough snakes and shapes the letters on top of the laminated mat.
  6. let child finger paint and make letter shapes in the paint with finger
  7. help child make the letters in the air with his “magic finger”. Trace letters on magazines with finger, or on cereal boxes (big letters – titles and such).
  8. get bathtub crayons and let child write letters on the walls of the tub.
  9. let child make letters in the sandbox with a stick
  10. finally, print off sheets from the computer for your child to practice letters.
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A Child Scribbles Before He Can Color

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A Child Colors Before He Can Learn to Write

There are many sites that will print off practice letters for your child to trace. Kid Zone lets you spell the child’s name, then it prints it off six times on a single sheet. First School prints off single letters of the alphabet, in several print styles.

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Tracing Letters in Wet Sand is More Fun Than Worksheets

Generally, your child should be able to write his name by kindergarten. It is rare to be able to write much more than that at a younger age, they just lack the eye-hand coordination to succeed. The more you can do to help your child, the better his handwriting will be in Kindergarten. Vary activities, though. After a few minutes of close-up work, have your child do something active and physical, allowing his eyes to rest. You don’t want to strain his eyes and perhaps cause a vision problem in the future.

Related Reading:
Teaching your child to write his name
How to Teach Your Baby to Read
Reading Readiness



Photo Credits:
Top:http://www.flickr.com/photos/riggenransom/ / CC BY 2.0
Middle:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodomut/ / CC BY 2.0
Middle:http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeryjl/ / CC BY 2.0
Bottom:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyfroglet/ / CC BY 2.0
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]]> http://raisingcreativechildren.com/beginning-writing/feed/ 1 Teaching your child to write his name http://raisingcreativechildren.com/teaching-child-write/ http://raisingcreativechildren.com/teaching-child-write/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:03:15 +0000 Lorelei http://raisingcreativechildren.com/?p=1702 3956357694_e78e3d407f
Drawing and Coloring are Important Activities to Develop Fine Motor Control

Sometime before he starts kindergarten, your young child should learn how to write his name. There are some steps he needs to master before he can write legibly, and some activities you can provide to help him along the way.

The young child can recognize words before he can physically write them. His eyesight isn’t quite 20/20 yet, though, so all words should be written fairly large. If you’re sitting really close to him, two inches is probably okay. Smaller than that, and you’re making it much harder for him than it needs to be, and may cause him eye-strain.

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Children Can Shape Letters With Playdough Before They Can Write Them

The small muscles in his hands and fingers are not fully developed, and his coordination is off. So anything you can do to give him lots of practice using those small muscles can only help. Let him play with playdough, string beads, lace shoestrings through a lacing card, play with legos, and cut with child safety scissors while supervised, to name a few.

Next, teach him to recognize his name. Print his name in large block letters – one capital letter, and the rest lower-case letters, the way he will see it written in school. Do not write it all in caps. Put his name on his bedroom door, at his place at the table, where he hangs his coat – any place you can think of putting it. You can start teaching him to read other words, too, if you like – any word that he finds interesting- print them in large letters on 4×6 index cards.

Next, have him roll playdough snakes and have him form the letters that make his name. You can print his name on cardboard and let him “trace” the name with playdough snakes. Later, let him make his name without the tracing card.

Spritz shaving cream on a cookie sheet, and let him draw his name in the cream. Supervise him, if you don’t want shaving cream everywhere, but this activity may amuse him for 15 to 20 minutes, and it’s educational, too. I let my granddaughter do similar supervised educational activities at the kitchen table while I do dishes or fix a meal. She’s having fun, she’s close by, and I know what she’s up to.

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There are Many Ways A Child Can Practice Writing the Alphabet that is More Productive than Worksheets

Let him fingerpaint his name, using a large sheet of paper and his favorite color of paint.

Let him draw his name in wet sand or mud.

Let him try to write his name with sidewalk chalk.

Finally, you can print off his name at a website like Kid Zone, and let him trace his name over and over. If you slip the paper in a page protector or laminate it, and get a dry erase marker, he can practice it and wipe it clean to reuse.

He’ll eventually graduate from dry-erase markers, to thick crayons, to pencils. But don’t rush him to writing with a pencil too soon. Let him develop the coordination first, and experience success at every step along the way.

Lorelei

For further reading, you may wish to read:
How to Teach Your Baby to Read
Reading Readiness
Play Areas for Encouraging Creativity

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Photo Credits:
Top: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/ / CC BY 2.0
Middle:http://www.flickr.com/photos/whgrad/ / CC BY 2.0
Bottom: http://www.flickr.com/photos/plindberg/ / CC BY 2.0

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