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).

Then, to teach them writing, first: let them scribble with crayons, pencils, pens, markers help them scribble a series of oval shapes help them scribble a series of lines – like zig-zags. 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. 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. let child finger paint and make letter shapes in the paint with finger 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). get bathtub crayons and let child write letters on the walls of the tub. let child make letters in the sandbox with a stick finally, print off sheets from the computer for your child to practice letters.

Writing Practice

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.

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

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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.

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.

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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