8 Effective Tips To Encourage Writing Skills In Your Kids

Is your kid ready for preschool? Do you want to ensure that she learns how to write the right way? Are you looking for some fun activities to encourage her to write? If these questions seem familiar, or you are looking for some simple yet effective writing techniques for your little one, consider reading this post.

As your kid reaches the age of 2.5 – 3 years, you should consider using some tips to pique her interest in writing and reading. These simple activities will help her learn the basics of writing. So, scroll down for some simple and fun writing tips on how to teach kids to write.

How To Teach Kids To Write?

Kids feel super excited to learn new things in life. Writing is one of such habit that indulges your kid’s learning ability. Your little angel may learn to write in her preschool years. It is the time when she would learn to recognize the vowels, letters, and symbols. During this stage, you will find your kid drawing zigzag patterns or drawing lines in the notebook.

By adopting proper techniques, you can encourage her writing skills of your kid and prepare her for writing. Teaching children to write is not a simple task. You need to show her how to hold the pencil and use it on paper. She will need lots of practice to understand proper writing techniques.

Here are few effective tips to help your kid go through the initial stage of writing:

1. Strengthen The Hands:

The best way to help your child get through the initial stage of teaching your child to write is by helping her develop stronger hand muscles. She needs to have strong muscles to hold the pencil firmly. The best way to strengthen the hand muscles is to encourage your kid to write or draw more on paper or a drawing board. You can also encourage her to use different craft toys and make simple objects like a tiny boat or play house. These activities strengthen your kid’s hands and allow her to hold the pencil firmly for a longer duration of time.

2. Encourage Proper Technique:

Your kid needs to develop a comfortable, yet sturdy grip to use the pencil. Show her how to hold the pen between her little fingers. Teach her how to hold the pencil in between the index finger and thumb while keeping the middle finger steady. If your child uses three fingers to hold the pencil, it is perfectly alright. With the right gripping technique; your kid learns to write letters smoothly and without shaking hands. But if the grip isn’t firm enough, your kid cannot write the letters using trembling hands.

3. Encourage Correct Posture:

During the initial stage of writing, your kid may find it hard to hold the pencil and the paper at the same time. For such reasons, you need to encourage the correct posture and help your child to write comfortably. To enhance your kid’s writing techniques, you can get her to write on a slanted surface. You can use a slanted desk to place the notebook so that your kid smoothly writes on the surface. During the writing process, make your child sit on a wooden chair at a desk in front of her. Don’t allow your kid to slant her body or lie down while practicing the writing techniques. The proper sitting postures help her to learn the writing etiquettes accurately and use those techniques in future days (1).

[ Read: Tips For Teaching Left Handed Children To Write ]

Step-By-Step Procedure To Teach Kids To Write:

Teaching your kid proper writing techniques is an effective way to help her settle in at preschool. Try to keep the technique as simple as possible and make your kid understand every aspect of writing. Take a plain white sheet of paper, markers, and pencils.

Here is how to encourage child to write through these steps:

Step 1: Write down simple letter or alphabets on the sheet of paper. While writing those letters, make sure that your child watches your hand grip and writing moves.

Step 2: After writing the letter on the paper, explain your kid about holding the pencil or marker with a tight grip between her fingers. You can hold a pencil in your fingers and ask your child to replicate your pencil holding technique.

Step 3: You can ask your child to draw simple lines on the sheet of paper first and then trace the letter. Let your kid trace the letter a couple of times until her hands adjust to the strokes and moves.

Step 4: Now, encourage your kid to write the letter. In the beginning, the letters may not look appropriate, and her hands may tremble. But no matter what, boost her confidence level and motivate her to write the letter again and again.

Step 5: Check the letter or alphabet, to make sure your kid wrote them correctly. If there are few mistakes in the bends or curves, rectify them and explain them with patience. Your kid would learn better when her mistakes get rectified immediately. It becomes easier for her to remember the mistakes and not to repeat them.

Step 6: When your child writes the letters accurately, praise her and boost her morale by giving her gifts like candies. With constant practice and encouragement, your kid can learn to write perfectly.

[ Read: Ways To Motivate Children ]

Ways To Encourage Writing Skills In Kids:

Your kid may take some time to master the new skill of writing. But you need to be patient and encourage your little one constantly.

Here are few vital tips to encourage writing skills in your kids:

1. Let Your Kid Scribble:

As soon as your kid learns the act of scribbling and holding items in her hands, give her a pen or pencil. Let her scribble on paper or drawing board. Constant scribbling makes the learning process faster.

2. Inspire Letter Recognition:

Inspire your little angel to recognize different alphabets and letters. You can use different objects like letter magnets, puzzles or alphabet toys to help her. You also need to teach her the difference between the confusing letters like ‘M’ and ‘W’. To make letter recognition more simple, you can break the alphabet into different [parts and join them consecutively. For instance, to teach letter ‘A’ break down the alphabet into three lines and ask your kid to join them.

3. Keep Writing Materials Handy:

Your kid may feel the urge to practice writing, at any point in time. If she has access to writing materials such as pencils, paper or a drawing board, she can start writing whenever she feels. Always encourage her and keep the writing materials handy and easily available.

4. Buy Large Sized Alphabet Toys:

To help your kid recognize the letters and alphabets easily, you need to buy alphabet puzzles or fridge magnets. Higher visibility increases their familiarity with the alphabets, and they can clearly recognize them. Large sized letters help your kid to understand the curves and bend of the alphabet and implicate them while writing on paper or board.

5. Writing Games With Letters:

There are different kinds of writing games to increase your kid’s interest towards writing. You can play missing letters or anagrams and ask your kid to recognize the letters.

6. Buy Activity Books:

You can use an activity book to teach your kid write and recognize the alphabets. The activity books contain traces of the alphabets in dotted form. Ask your kid to join the dots and write the alphabet. A structured activity book with alphabet and letter games encourages your kid’s writing interest.

[ Read: Language Development Tips For Children ]

7. Write Her Name:

Encourage your kid to write her name. Show her how to write her name on a birthday card for her Grandma.

8. Fun With Dough:

To encourage writing and letter recognition, ask your kid to create different alphabets using the dough. She will feel excited to perform this fun activity, and she will remember the shape of the alphabets easily.

9. Proper Technique:

Show your kid the proper technique of holding the pencils between her fingers. As your kid replicates your gripping technique, she finds it interesting to hold the pencil for the first time. Typically, she will want to scribble on a sheet of paper. Now depict the alphabets using your fingers and ask your kid to recognize them and try to write the alphabets on the paper.

10. Offer Interesting Tools:

Encourage fun activities and use interesting tools to teach your kid writing. One of such tool is a sand tray. Ask your kid to use her finger and write the alphabets in the sand. She will be terribly excited to draw patterns in the sand and learn to recognize different letters through the technique. Painting fingers with water color is another technique to teach your preschooler writing. Dip her fingers in vibrant watercolor, and ask her to write anything with her painted fingers. These interesting activities elevate your kid’s writing interest, and she learns to write (2).

[ Read: Language Activities For Kids ]

Different Stages To Implement Writing Skills In Kids:

While teaching kids to write, you need to have patience and practice all the intermediate stages of writing. The four stages of writing help your kid in learning the basic motor skill of writing accurately.

1. Modeled Writing:

Modeled writing is the preliminary stage of teaching your kid to recognize and identify different shapes, letters, and alphabets accurately. The different writing activities like sand writing, playing with dough, writing on salt tray or finger paint encourages your kid to use her fingers and start scribbling different letters. By the intervention of right strategies of modeled writing, your kid learns the art of using her fingers to write or draw something.

2. Shared Writing:

In the process of shared writing; you have to trace the particular alphabet or number on a sheet of paper or drawing board. Your kid repeats over the traced image or alphabet. Shared writing technique allows your kid to learn the perfect bends and curves of the alphabets and traced letters.

3. Guided Writing:

It is the third step in teaching kids to write. In the following stage, the teacher or parents provide ideas and feedback for the kids. Effective guidance helps your kid get some knowledge about the concept and start drawing the related image on the piece of paper. For instance, you may dictate your kid about a football match and how it looks exactly. Your kid derives the information, holds the crayon or pencil and starts drawing the image of the football on paper.

4. Independent Writing:

The final phase of implementing writing skills in kids is independent writing. At this stage, your kids learn to write the letters or draw lines more comfortably.

8 Fun Activities To Encourage Writing Skills In Kids:

Here are fun activities to encourage writing skills in your little ones:

1. Glue A Bumpy Alphabet:

You Will Need:

• Markers

• Paper plates

• White glue

• Popsicle sticks

• 26 large index cards

How To:

1. Use coloring markers to write each letter of English alphabet on each of the index cards. Encourage your kid to join you in the writing process.

2. Squeeze small amount of white glue on the paper plate.

3. Now it’s time to glue the alphabets. Ask your kid to dip the popsicle stick into the white glue and draw the alphabets, by following the exact pattern of the index cards. Make sure to keep the focus on one letter at a time. As your kid traces the letter in glue, set the paper plate aside to dry.

4. As soon as the glue alphabets on the paper plates get dry, it’s time to play the bumpy alphabet game. Ask your kid to touch and feel the letters created with glue. By touching the glued letter, she can get a good idea of the writing handwriting strokes with her fingertips.

[ Read: Ways To Improve Handwriting For Kids ]

2. Homemade Finger-paint:

You Will Need:

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• ¼ cup cornstarch

• 1 cup cold water

• 1 ½ tablespoon sugar

• Food coloring

How To:

1. Put the mentioned amount of cornstarch, water, sugar, and salt in a pot. Put the pot of medium flame for fifteen minutes and stir the content constantly.

2. On heating the mixture tends getting thinner. Take the pot off the heat and let the mixture cool down.

3. Once the mixture cools down, divide the content into small jars and add a fe drops of fool color to each of the jar.

4. Your homemade color is ready and safe for kids’ skin.

5. Ask your little one to dip her fingers in the organic color and write letter or draw patterns on paper.

6. She will feel excited to get indulged in the fun writing activity.

3. Scratch Art:

You Will Need:

• White paper

• Newspaper

• Crayons of different shades

• Paint brush

• Water

• Black tempera paint

• Paperclip

How To:

1. Lay the sheet of newspapers on the floor to protect them from the paint mess.

2. Give your kid a piece of plain white paper and bunch of colorful crayons. Encourage her to fill the entire sheet of plain paper with different colors and varying patterns.

3. As the paper completely gets covered with colorful lines and patterns, help your kid to paint the complete sheet with the black tempera paint. Set the sheet aside to dry.

4. As the paint gets fully dry, handle the paperclip to your kid and ask her to scratch the black paint. On scratching she discovers amazing colors of the crayons and feels excited to discover the different colors.

5. Ask your kid to write few alphabets through the scratching technique. Experiment the activity with different sizes of paperclips. You kid feels excited to perform the scratching activity and learns to write different shapes and alphabets.

[ Read: Shape Learning Activities For Kids ]

4. Branch Out – Create an Alphabet Tree:

You Will Need:

• Markers

• Scissor

• Ruler

• Construction paper (Brown, white and green color)

• Glue stick

How To:

1. Help your kid cut the different shapes of tree from the brown and green construction paper. A rectangle shape is perfect for the tree trunk, while the green leaves can look great in triangle or square.

2. Ask your kid to cut out 26 pieces of leaves from the green card board paper and keep them aside.

3. Glue the trunk and branches of the tree on the piece of white construction paper. The branches should spread outwards in different directions, so that the leaves can fit into the provided space.

4. Glue three to five leaves on each branch and make sure to utilize all 26 pieces of leaves.

5. Hand your kid with the marker and encourage her to write different alphabets of each of the leaves. If required, write the first few letters of the English alphabets and ask her to resume the sequence henceforth.

6. By writing different alphabets on the leaves, your kid will feel amazed to see the alphabet tree. After she completes writing all the alphabets, point out to some of the specific ones, and ask her to recognize them. These can enhance her recognition skills as well.

5. Make Rice Pictures:

You Will Need:

• Uncooked rice

• Food colorant in varied shades

• Glue

• Rubbing alcohol

• Paper

How To:

1. Take the one cup of uncooked rice in a large bowl. Add half teaspoon of rubbing alcohol and few drops of food colorant. Place the rice in the jellyroll pan and set aside to dry.

2. Draw the alphabets or letters on a piece of paper using a waterproof marker.

3. Ask your kid to dip the colored rice in glue and stick them over the traces of alphabets or letters.

4. Your kid uses the process and follows the exact pattern to stick the pieces of rice one after the other.

5. The activity helps your kid learn the accurate bend and curves of the alphabets and she could recognize them easily.

[ Read: Educational Learning Activities For Kids ]

6. Connect The Dots And Letters:

You Will Need:

• Paper

• Markers

How To:

1. Draw few dots on a plain sheet of paper and ask your kid to join the dots.

2. When your kid learns the dots joining technique, try to represent some alphabets or numbers using the dotted structure.

3. Ask your kid to join the dots, and she discovers the alphabets or hidden letters.

4. The activity helps kids to recognize different shapes and letter and get used to the writing technique.

7. Name Tracing Game:

You Will Need:

• Paper

• Coloring markers

• Glue

• Pencil

How To:

1. Write the name of your kid on a piece of white paper using a pencil.

2. Ask your kid to trace over the written letters using a coloring marker. As your little one uses the marker to write her name, she gets accustomed with the exact name spell and how to write it.

3. After she completes tracing the name using marker, handle her glue tube. Make her to trace the name using the glue now.

4. After the glue dries off, she can also move her fingers around the letters and try to feel the curves and bend.

5. The name tracing activity helps your kid to learn writing their own name and recognizing the letters accurately.

[ Read: Learning School Activities For Kids ]

8. Playing With Dough:

You Will Need:

• Soft dough made from wheat or flour

• Plastic or play tray

How To:

1. Knit a soft dough using plain flour. Alternatively you can also use lump of clay (colored).

2. Ask your kid to make different letters or alphabets from the dough.

3. Playing with dough is great to build the strength in your kid’s hands.

4. She can make fun designs, shapes and alphabets and learn to recognize the different objects, in a fun way.

By incorporating such fun and amazing preschool writing activities your kid effectively develops her writing and motor skills. As a responsible parent, you need to have patience and encourage your little angel to write. Your constant encouragement and motivation will boost her morale, and she will try her level best to learn the accurate writing techniques.

Did you incorporate any innovative writing activity to encourage writing skill in your kid? Did it help her improve? Share your activity ideas about teaching a child to write with other mommies here! Comment in the box below.

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