The development of pre-writing skills is an important part of your child’s preschool years. Pre-writing skills set a strong foundation for developing finger muscles and teaching correct grasp of the pencil. In order to develop a correct grasp it’s important that a child’s fine motor skills are worked upon with various engaging activities.
The activities will help them to develop a correct method to write numbers, alphabet and drawing skills. There are a number of pre-writing tasks that can help encourage a child’s interest in writing. Tracing is one of the most basic and engaging activities that promote pre-writing skills. It can be made fun and interesting using a variety of home supplies.
We’ve put together a list of tracing activities that you can do with your preschooler and they’re bound to enjoy.
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Cut yarn string in various colours and lengths. Draw or print out various shapes, numbers or alphabet on paper. Get your child to trace the letter/shape using glue and then go over the alphabet/shape using the yarn. The activity promotes fine-motor skills and concentration along with pre-writing skills.
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You will need a coloured card, marker pen and assorted buttons. Draw out some shapes and patterns on the paper. If you do not have buttons, you may like to use gemstones, string, stones, pebbles, bottle tops, pompoms, shells or other small tokens for this activity. This fun activity promotes creativity as the toddlers trace along the various shapes using buttons.
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Save this for a sunny day! Ask your child to build a structure/building out of blocks or anything they fancy. Place a few objects against the sun on a white paper so that the shadow of the objects falls on the paper behind. Using a crayon or a pencil have your child trace the outline of the structure using the shadow and create a drawing. This is such a fun activity and they’ll absolutely love it.
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Roll out sheets of paper and draw a mix of zig-zag and curly lines. All your child needs to do is trace the lines using different coloured stickers. This activity may look simple, but it helps a great deal in building concentration and developing eye-hand coordination as the child follows the path and places the stickers on the lines. You could make the design an alphabet and get him/her to trace the path.
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Your child will love dipping cotton swabs into various colours creating simple patterns, lines, alphabet and numbers. Cotton swabs are fun miniature painting tools that help promote imagination skills and creativity. All you need is a drawing sheet with alphabet, numbers or pattern drawn with a marker. Dip earbuds or cotton swabs into the paint and create your desired pattern. When they grip the earbud/swab their hand muscles get strengthened and helps with their writing at a later date.
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Write letters, numbers or draw shapes using chalk on a chalkboard. Ask your child to now trace over the letters using a wet brush. As your child grows you can move on to spelling their name, sight words and other big words your child might be learning. This activity works wonders for eye-hand coordination and alphabet recognition skills as well.
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