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10 Pre-Writing Activities for Preschoolers

by Angela Thayer 16 Comments

My oldest, who is almost 5, recently started attending a wonderful church preschool. At school, he is asked to trace his name as well as other letters they are working on. When I watch him write, I notice he is upset when he can’t follow the lines perfectly. (I think he got this perfectionist trait from me…sorry!) I also notice that it is hard for him to control the writing utensil. Because I saw this lack of confidence in his writing skills and I decided to help him with this. I realized the best place to start is with building up hand strength and to practice fine motor skills. Kids need to build up their hand strength through fine motor skills before actually writing. So today, I’m sharing 10 pre-writing activities we’ve been doing at home to build strength in my preschooler’s hands.

10 Pre-Writing Activities for Preschoolers

Playdough

Just playing with playdough is great for building strength in hands. Practice making balls, rolling playdough into snakes, or create fun designs.

Soft Playdough

Q-tip painting

Practice the pincer grip by painting with a q-tip. Kids love this activity and you get to make beautiful art!

painting with q-tips

Lacing

You can buy lacing cards or create your own from foam sheets or card stock, like we did in lacing hearts or lacing crowns. It’s really great practice for fine motor skills!

Lacing

Beads & Pipe Cleaners

Use the pincer grip to slide beads onto pipe cleaners.

Beads for Fine Motor

Cutting Practice

Using scissors is a great way to build hand strength. If paper is too hard to cut, try cutting playdough.

Cut Playdough

Write in Corn Meal

This is so much fun! Just pour corn meal, sugar, or flour onto a tray. Then let your child write with their finger to make letters or designs.

Writing in Corn Meal

After using fingers to write, try using a writing utensil. Encourage using the tripod grip on the utensil.

Prewriting Activity in Corn Meal

Tweezers

An easy fine motor activity is using tweezers or tongs to transfer objects. Even toddlers can try this one out! I love this skunk tweezer we found at a local education store. (Sorry I can’t find it on the web!)

Tweezers for Fine Motor

Clothespins

Opening a clothespin takes a lot of strength. I love using count and clip cards to practice using clothespins. The child simply counts the objects on the card and then puts a clothespin on the correct number. You can download a free copy of our desert animals clip cards here or kite clip cards here.

Count & Clip Cards

Scrunching Paper

Just scrunching paper into a ball is great for building hand strength! You could use newspaper, tissue paper, wrapping paper, or regular paper. And what kid doesn’t love throwing paper balls?!

Scrunching paper for building hand strength

Droppers

Simply take a glass of water and have your child practice using a water dropper. I colored our water with food coloring and had him transfer all the water from one cup to the other. The squeezing motion will help build strength in the child’s hand.

Water Dropper

While it’s important to do fine motor activities, also give your child opportunities to practice using writing utensils. 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.

Coloring with Markers

The key to good handwriting is continual practice with fine motor skills. If your child has poor handwriting, it may be they need more practice with fine motor skills. To read more on this subject, I recommend reading this article on teaching handwriting written by my OT blogging friend.

After a couple weeks of doing these pre-writing activities, I’ve noticed an improvement of strength in his hands and better handwriting! And he feels much more confident in writing. We’ll continue to work on this!

What prewriting activity would you add to this list?

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Filed Under: Preschool, Writing Tagged With: fine motor skills, writing

Comments

  1. Pen Mama says
    October 18, 2014 at 12:01 am

    These are some great ideas! Thanks for sharing! I’m going to try them out with my kids.
    Pen Mama recently posted…Pilot Metropolitan Fountain Pen ReviewMy Profile

    Reply
  2. Reshmi says
    June 1, 2015 at 6:26 am

    Thanks that was amazing!.

    Reply
  3. Risna says
    August 24, 2015 at 5:32 pm

    Thanks a lot for your tips.now I am doing this activities with my child.my kindly request for you to provide me with more and more such tips.thanks

    Reply
  4. lavenderpreschool says
    November 22, 2015 at 6:24 am

    These are very effective ideas.thank you very much

    Reply
  5. Rutchel says
    April 24, 2016 at 9:00 am

    These are incredibly good ideas. Have tried out a couple with my son and they are fun.
    Thank you for sharing.

    Reply
  6. AAR says
    January 31, 2017 at 8:36 am

    Thanks a loads!!

    Reply
  7. Stephanie says
    April 24, 2017 at 1:17 pm

    The animal tweezers can be found here https://dough.tools/products/animal-tweezers

    Reply
    • Angela says
      July 18, 2017 at 11:12 am

      Thank you for linking my playdough tools store, Stephanie. Dough Tools is based in Australia. In the US, Amazon sell those as “Pipsqueak Squeezers”.

      Reply
  8. Oyanni says
    August 7, 2017 at 6:27 am

    Wonderful ideas! Thank you for sharing

    Reply
  9. Amber says
    May 17, 2018 at 1:56 pm

    Hi, I found the skunk tweezers. I’m unsure if someone may have already posted the website but here it is https://dough.tools/products/animal-tweezers . Thanks for the great ideas! I can’t wait to practice with my three-year-old.

    Reply
    • Angela Thayer says
      May 18, 2018 at 6:26 am

      Thank you for sharing!! We still use the skunk tweezers…they are a favorite!

      Reply
  10. anagha says
    February 23, 2019 at 8:08 pm

    Thanks a lot for your good tips one kind request to you give me such more tips so i can apply on my pre school kids. thank u so much.

    Reply
  11. Andrea says
    June 22, 2019 at 7:05 pm

    These are great! Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  12. JoAnn Wilder says
    April 15, 2020 at 3:33 pm

    Thank you so much for these great ideas. I plan to pass them on to my nephew to use with his little one!
    Sincerely,
    Jo

    Reply
  13. Julia says
    November 4, 2020 at 2:53 am

    Thank you for sharing, I was frustrated to see my son struggling with his writing skills, definitely I will practice it with him.

    Reply
  14. Gina J says
    December 20, 2020 at 4:33 am

    I’m a new preschool teacher for 3-4 yr olds. Thank you for all the amazing ideas!

    Reply

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