Try a Fine-Motor Journal to Encourage Enjoyment of Writing

Most kids do not love learning to write by practicing letter formation. And the truth is, there are certain fine-motor skills that need to be there before kids can learn to write.

To make both getting ready to write and developing those physical skills a little more fun for kids and teachers/parents alike, why not try setting up a fine-motor journal for preschoolers?

This idea comes from Stay at Home Educator, and it involves making little books where the kids put in stickers and draw lines between the stickers or do other activities. They get the fine-motor work both of peeling the stickers and controlling a crayon without the pressure of making letters, and in the end they have a book to show for their efforts, which should also get them excited about later writing books with real letters and words.

Check out her post for all the details and more tips for teaching writing to little ones.

[Photo: Stay at Home Educator.]

So why is tracing important for my toddler to learn and does it help with handwriting? Yes, it does, Learning to trace teaches your child fine motor skills. Tracing is not only limited to preschoolers, it is suitable for all development ages when learning to write, not matter what the age.

Tracing, when added to your child’s drawing time, helps polish those pre-writing abilities, establishing a solid basis for drawing and emerging writing. Highlights: Tracing helps young children strengthen their pre-writing abilities and lays the groundwork for drawing and writing letters and words.

Looking for more tracing worksheets and activities for your child? Check out these tracing articles. If you are looking for some great worksheets check out these tracing workbooks on Amazon.

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If you have a little one learning their letters at home or at school, it can be helpful to know a bit about the science that goes into learning your letters and how the experts teach letter recognition.

Knowing the alphabet is the basis for learning how to read, so it’s important to get it down. Kids need to know the differences between letters, to be able to recognize their shapes and to know what sounds the letters make individually before they can start combining them in words.

Proud to Be Primary suggests starting with letters that are meaningful to the child such as the letters in their name. Tracing letters and doing letter matching and other games with letters are great ways to start kids on the road to recognizing letters. Then things like alphabet songs, books and picture cards can be added in to help with phonics and the basics of reading.

This Crafty Mom talks about using the Carnine method for teaching letter recognition, which starts with all lowercase letters and separates letters that look similar to each other (like b and d, or c and e). This makes a lot of sense because it’s not as confusing, and you can learn alphabetical order later.

How Wee Learn uses a slightly different order but the idea is the same, though she also would start with the letters in a child’s name, then go on with the rest of them. This post includes more fun games for letter recognition including digging up letters and taping letters on the floor for kids to throw paper airplanes on.

Looking for more fun ways to learn the alphabet and letter recognition? This Kaboom game from The Many Little Joys is easy to make, fun for little kids, and once you’ve used it to learn letters you can make a new version for sight words, numbers, basic math problems and more.

Early Learning Ideas has tons of letter activities including collages, crafts, tactile letter cards, letter recognition activities and much more. Do one letter a day or a week and your kiddos will know their letters in no time. And be sure to grab these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs, which give kids easy activities for recognizing letters and words that begin with them.

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