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Pre-Writing Activities for Toddlers & Preschoolers

Shamima's WOrkshop Early Childhood Education • 25 January 2023

What are writing readiness skills (pre-writing)?

Pre-writing skills are the fundamental skills that children must develop before they can write. These abilities help the child to hold and use a pencil, as well as to draw, write, copy, and colour. Pre-writing shapes are an important part of developing pre-writing skills. Most letters, numbers, and early drawings are made up of these pencil strokes. They are typically learned in a sequential order and at an age-appropriate level. The following strokes are included: |, —, O, +, /, square,, X, and. Research has shown that in order to write efficiently, a child must have:

  • Developed gross motor skill. Such as, balance, co-ordination.
  • Developed fine motor skills such as pincer grip.
  • Shoulder strength
  • arm muscle development

Before children can master how to form letters and handwriting, they must first learn basic pre-writing skills. They need to build up their hand strength through fine motor skills before actually writing. Pre-Writing skills are needed before any letter formation or other handwriting skills are mastered. I’m sharing some pre-writing activities that can done at home or preschool to build strength in toddler and preschooler’s( children ages from 2- 5) hands. These activities are interesting with using items you already have at home. I will introduce you to some helpful pre-writing activities and skills. The suggestions below help students to work on early writing skills before they ever pick up a pencil.

 1. Drawing on sensory Squishy bags:
Sensory bags are perfect for toddlers that still put things in their mouth and are even a great way for babies to explore! Pre-writing activities with squishy bags is a great way to invite children fun and exciting way to practice writing letter, numbers, and shapes, drawing pictures with hand and index finger movements. Children may use their index finger to trace on or tools like cotton bud (which is also known as Q-tip). 



2. Scrunching Paper:
Scrunching paper is a simple and fun motor development exercise that children can do at home or in the classroom. It can be is great for building hand strength! Newspaper, tissue paper, wrapping paper, dyed issue towel, or regular paper can be used. These crumpled papers can be used for different creative/ craft.



3. Using tongs to pick up objects:
When children play with tongs, they exercise the small hand muscles needed for developing fine motor skills like writing with pencils. Children can start playing with tongs as early as toddlerhood. Try to give toddlers short salad tongs so they can use with their whole hand to start out. You can give kitchen tongs to toddlers to pick up different objects/ items that you might have in your home. Like blocks (wooden blocks, mega blocks etc), cooked spaghetti, sponge letter/shares or sorting pom poms. This is a great activity that helps children to strengthen the hand muscles, requires hand-eye co-ordination and also concentration and patience. 








4. Lacing Activities for children:
Lacing activities help children develop fine motor skills, bilateral coordination, motor planning and visual perceptual skills. In addition, lacing helps children practice the precursor skills for shoe tying and sewing. You can start simple and have children practice lacing large plastic buttons, wooden beads, progressing to smaller beads on a shoe lace, thick thread or pipe cleaner. If you want to make it easier, start by lacing large beads onto a pipe cleaner (the stiffness of the pipe cleaner makes lacing the bead easier). You can buy lacing cards or create your own from foam sheets or card stock, like lacing hearts or lacing crowns. It’s really great practice for fine motor skills!


5. Practicing pincer grip with clothes pegs:
Clothespins! They are perfect for those little toddler fingers! This is a super simple clothespin activity for toddlers to explore and strengthen their fine motor skills. When using clothespins to work on fine motor skills, children can address so many underlying skill areas. Fine motor skills like bilateral coordination, hand strength, arch strength, intrinsic hand strength, eye-hand coordination, motor planning, proprioceptive sensory input, and so many other areas. 



6. Scissor skills- cutting practice 
Cutting gives young children independent movements of each finger. Cutting with scissors works on the separation of two sides of the hand and strengthens hand muscles. Bilateral coordination is also addressed when they have to hold the scissors in one hand and paper in the other. Scissors skills like cutting playdough, simple strip collage, straws, flowers, yarn are fun activities for toddlers and preschoolers pre-writing skills. 



7. Trace with index finger: 
Tracing on sensory tray with finger is a fun and interesting pre-writing activity. Children can draw any shapes, numbers, and letter on the sensory tray. A few more materials you can add to a tray or pan. Food colouring or scents can be added to these materials as well, or they can just be left plain. You can use sand, flour, shaving cream or corn meal.




8. Manipulating playdough:
Playdough activities are a great way to help child develop fine motor skills as well as bilateral coordination skills! Manipulating playdough helps to strengthen hand muscles and develop control over the fingers. Snipping playdough sausages helps develop scissor cutting skills. Rolling balls, rolling sausages, making a pinch pot, rolling small balls,  rolling playdough into snakes, or create fun designs are some interesting pre-writing activities for preschoolers. 
Pre-writing & Tracing activities

Looking for More?

While it’s important to do fine motor activities, also give your child opportunities to practice using writing utensils with worksheets. Let them use markers, crayons, colored pencils, dry erase markers, etc. Another tip is to break crayons in half so it’s easier to write with. I have created a few pre-writing and tracing worksheets which contains some strokes recommended for pre-writing development. You can download from here.


DOWNLOAD

All of the activity ideas listed are designed to be complete with adult supervision. Also, you know what your child will be able to handle, so take their fine motor skills and age into consideration. These are some interesting pre-writing activities that can be repeat often in different formats so that little one gets plenty of opportunities to develop strength in their hands an fingers.

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