10 Activities to Get Children Ready for Prewriting Skills

The fingers, hands and shoulders require hours and hours of practicing different skills to get ready for the actual job of picking up a pencil and making marks, lines, shapes and letters on paper.  Prewriting skills include the ability to write straight lines, curved lines, zig-zags and shapes. These skills are building blocks for letter formation during handwriting tasks.  Here is a list of 10 fun activities to get children ready for prewriting skills:

1. Play Dough – Using play dough helps strengthen the muscles in the fingers, hands and shoulders which are essential for legible handwriting.
2. Playing in prone – By laying down on the floor on their bellies propping up on their elbows, the shoulders, arms and hands receive proprioceptive and tactile input to help children learn where their body is in space.  In addition, this position helps to strengthen the head and neck muscles.
3. Animal Walks – Children can practice moving like different animals particularly ones where their hands are on the floor such as bear walks, seal walks and donkey kicks.
4. Sensory Trays – Practice making marks in different sensory materials such as shaving cream, sand or flour.
5. Lacing Activities – Lace beads onto pipe cleaners.  Try lacing shoelaces on lacing cards.  These types of activities help to fine tune the intricate fine motor skills needed for handwriting.
6. Make shapes and letters with your body – Form the lines, shapes and letters using your body.  Check out Alphabet Movement Cards for easy visuals to get started.
7. Move in different directions – Perform locomotor skills in straight lines, curved lines and zig zags.  Move in a circle.  This helps children develop visual spatial skills which is necessary for spacing and sizing of letters.
8. Building blocks – Using Lego or Duplo blocks help children improve fine motor skills, muscle strength in the hands and fingers and visual spatial skills.  Brick Activities for Home and School provides patterns to create numbers, alphabet and seasonal objects using LEGO® style 2×2 and 2×4 size blocks.
9. Fingerpaint – Let children explore making marks with their fingers.  It is easy and fun.  If the child dislikes the sensation of finger painting, offer different objects to paint with instead such as toy cars or plastic toy animal feet.
10. Moving or placing objects along a path – The teacher can draw different lines or shapes on paper or put painter’s tape on the floor. If it is on paper, children can try putting stickers along the lines or rocks.  If is painter’s tape on the floor, children can try driving toy cars along the lines.  Draw with sidewalk chalk outdoors and children can practice riding a tricycle along the path.

When the children are ready to start with pre-writing skills here are some great resources:

Prewriting Activity Pages includes 50 black and white pictures to trace and color. This is a “just right” activity for children who are learning to write, draw and color. Each picture has dotted lines for the child to trace to practice visual motor skills. Once completed, the child can paint or color the picture. Various prewriting practice strokes are included throughout the packet such as vertical lines, horizontal lines, diagonal lines, curves, circles, squares, loops, wavy lines and more!  FIND OUT MORE.

Fading Lines and Shapes includes worksheets that gradually increase in visual motor difficulty while decreasing visual input for line and shape formation.  There are 18 worksheets for line formations ie horizontal, vertical, curves, waves, diagonals, spikes and combinations.  There are 9 worksheets for shape formations ie circle, cross, square, rectangle, X, triangle, diamond, oval and heart.  This download is great for push in therapy, therapy homework or consultation services in the classroom.  FIND OUT MORE.

Simple Lines, Shapes and Design Coloring Pages: This download is a collection of pre-writing and drawing visual motor worksheets. Practice coloring horizontal lines, vertical lines, curved lines, diagonal lines, zig zags, circles, crosses, squares, rectangles, X’s, triangles, diamonds, ovals, hearts and various combined designs. There are 40 coloring page in total. Print them full size or select print multiple pages to print half or quarter size pages. This is a great packet to encourage creativity, pre-writing strokes and coloring skills. You could use crayons, water colors or paints to complete the pictures. The dark black background helps the children to see how to stay within the shape. If mistakes are made, the errors are not as noticeable so it may help to decrease frustration in children who have difficulty coloring.  FIND OUT MORE.

Lines, Lines and More Lines: This download is a collection of pre-writing visual motor worksheets. Practice pencil control for vertical, horizontal, diagonal and curved lines. There are 4 separate activities included: 24 task cards to practice pre-writing strokes, 5 worksheets connecting words starting with the same letter drawing different lines, 4 spin and trace the line games and 3 roll and finish the picture games.  This download is an excellent choice for: fine motor centers in the classroom, visual motor skill practice, special education classrooms and/or handwriting warm ups. FIND OUT MORE.

The post 10 Activities to Get Children Ready for Prewriting Skills appeared first on Your Therapy Source.

Prewriting Lines and Strokes Hot Air Balloon

Complete this picture of the hot air balloon while practicing prewriting lines and strokes.  This is a free printable that you can download below to practice diagonal and curved lines.  It is from the Prewriting Handwriting Activity Pages packet.  After the child completes the picture, he/she can color or paint it.

DOWNLOAD PREWRITING LINES AND STROKES HOT AIR BALLOON

Prewriting Activity Pages includes 50 black and white pictures to trace and color. This is a “just right” activity for children who are learning to write, draw and color. Each picture has dotted lines for the child to trace to practice visual motor skills. Once completed, the child can paint or color the picture. Various prewriting practice strokes are included throughout the packet such as vertical lines, horizontal lines, diagonal lines, curves, circles, squares, loops, wavy lines and more! FIND OUT MORE.

The post Prewriting Lines and Strokes Hot Air Balloon appeared first on Your Therapy Source.

Holiday Tree Prewriting Activity Page

Here is a FREE Holiday tree prewriting activity page to practice visual motor skills.  The child can practice tracing each of the small circles to complete the holiday tree.  Once all the circles have been drawn, paint or color in the picture.  This is a great, quick NO PREP activity to encourage visual perceptual skills during the December holiday season.

DOWNLOAD the free Holiday tree prewriting activity page.

This activity is from the Holiday Prewriting Activity Pages packet.  The download includes 20 black and white December holiday pictures to trace and color. This is a “just right” activity for children who are learning to write, draw and color. Each picture has dotted lines for the child to trace to practice visual motor skills. Once completed, the child can paint or color the picture. Various prewriting practice strokes are included throughout the packet such as vertical lines, horizontal lines, diagonal lines, crosses, circles, triangles, wavy lines and more!

 

The 20 pictures to complete include: holiday tree, present, candle, ornament, star tree, stocking, snow globe, santa, reindeer, bell, hanging ornaments, holly wreath, gingerbread men, gingerbread house, snowflakes, candy canes, holiday lights, outdoor trees, fir tree and holiday tree with ornaments.

FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION.

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Fading Lines and Shapes Freebie

Since the Fading Alphabet packet has sold so well, I decided to make a Fading Lines and Shapes packet for pre-writing and shape formation.  Each worksheet gradually increases in visual motor difficulty with decreasing visual input for line and shape formation.

You can download some free sample pages athttp://yourtherapysource.com/fadinglinesshapesfreebie or check out the complete download at http://yourtherapysource.com/fadinglinesshapes.html

5 Ways to Work on Pre-Writing Skills without a Pencil

Here are 5 simple ideas to work on pre-writing skills without ever picking up a pencil -

1.  Sensory Trays for Pre-Writing.  Put some shaving cream, sand, rice, salt, etc. in a tray.  Have the child practice "writing" horizontal, vertical, diagonal and curved lines using their finger.



2.  Draw some horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines o paper.  Have the child place stickers along the lines.



3.  Have the children make their bodies into different types of lines - vertical, horizontal and curved.  Try shapes.

4.  Draw lines on a chalkboard or whiteboard.  The child can erase the lines using a small sponge.

5.  Use pipe cleaners or wax strings to create the lines and shapes.  If you don't have pipe cleaners, look for different items in your school or house that you could use ie wooden spoons for lines, jar lids for circles, etc.

Need more ideas to work on lines and shapes?  Try Wax String Activities at http://yourtherapysource.com/wax.html.  This download promotes fine motor skills,
figure ground skills, visual perceptual skills, visual closure skills, visual motor skills, tactile input and cognitive skills.  Get some free sample pages to start practicing.



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Freebie - Black and White Lines for Pre-Writing Practice

Download these FREE black and white line pages to practice horizontal, vertical, diagonal, zig zag and curved strokes.  You can download them for free in three different sizes depending upon the child's visual motor skills.

Visit http://www.YourTherapySource.com/freeblackwhiteprewriting for the downloads.

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10 Simple Games to Practice Drawing and Handwriting

Here are a few quick, simple activities to practice drawing, pre-writing strokes and/or letter formation:

1.)  Squiggle Drawing:  Draw a squiggle line on a piece of paper.  Pass it to someone else.  Let them add to the squiggle line to create a picture.

2.)  Themed Squiggle Drawing:  Draw a squiggle on a piece of paper.  Write a theme on the top of the paper (i.e. - farm animal).  Pass the paper to someone else and they have to create a farm animal from the squiggle on the paper.

3.)  Group Shape Picture:  Pick one shape (i.e. circles).  Hang up a large piece of paper on an easel or the wall.  Each person should add one circle to the paper, whatever size and color they wish.  Add to it each day to create a nice work of art.  Change shapes the next time.

4.)  Drawing to Music:  Turn on different types of music and draw while listening.

5.)  Simon Says Draw:  Just like the active game of Simon Says except the leader calls out phrases like:  "Simon says draw a circle".  "Simon says draw a face".  "Draw three lines", "Write the letter A"....

6.)  Follow the Leader:  Put the easel in the front of the room or use a whiteboard.  Choose one student to be a leader.  That student draws an object.  Each student at their seat follows the leader and draws the same object.  Keep going and compare everyone's pictures at the end.

7.)  Hot Artwork:  Put a piece of paper on a clipboard and put several different writing utensils in the middle of a circle.  Have the children sit in a circle.  Turn on music and pass the clipboard.  When the music stops, the person holding the clipboard draws one object.  Turn the music on again and repeat until a picture is created.

8.)  Hide the Drawings:  Put two children near each other but put up a divider so they can not see each other's paper.  Call out directions such as: draw a house, draw a flower in the yard, draw a bird in the sky, etc.  At the end compare the pictures and see if they are similar.  For letters you could call out directions such as: write a capital letter 'A' in the right corner, write a lowercase 'b' in the bottom left corner, etc.

9.)  Complete the picture:  Using  a starting image on a piece of paper, have the child complete the picture.  Here are free sample pages from Partner Pictures to download.  Try some Dice Drawing.  Roll the dice and complete the picture.  Here is a sample page to try Dice Drawing.     

10.)  Hide and Go Draw/Write:  This is played like regular hide and go seek except the person hiding brings a clipboard along.  While hiding they must draw a picture or write a word/ phrase.  When the seeker finds them, he/she has to guess what was drawn or read the words.