I’ve read posts of kids starting to write as early as 18 months! :ohmy: That is amazing! I don’t really have this as a goal for my baby at the moment, but knowing that it is possable makes me feel that I should be encouraging this developmental area.
I give my child opportunities to scribble everyday and will then draw simple images and write letters and words (usually focusing on one letter per week, and words that my baby can read.) These oppertunities include: Finger painting in the bath with waterpaints, scribbling with chalk (on anything and everything in the backyard) and crayons on paper, drawing in the sand, “painting” with mud and “kids paint and draw” app on my tablet.
We also play with frige magnet letters, I spell out words and try and ceep him from swallowing a few, and every so often I open a word document and let him type with huge red font, but he usually end up switching off my laptop PC (anybody know of a kids friendly way to allow experimenting with the keyboard keys without harming your PC?)
So yes, that’s what I’m doing, does anybody have suggestions for me on the topic of teaching my baby to write, aspecially those of you who has children who started to write early on.
I took all of my left- over peel and stick dots( like the Doman dots but indifferent colors!) I first traced page-siZed letters and numbers, then stuck the dots on about 1 inch apart. Sort of like an enormous dot-to-dot. Then, so I wouldn’t have to do them repeatedly, I put them in plastic sheet protectors and let her practice this way! I honestly think it is more about learning ‘how’ to draw the letters and numbers…on my first set I wrote numbers so that she would connect the dots in order, but soon realized this was getting in the way! She was concentrating so much on the next number in the sequence (she LOVES to count!) that she wasn’t focusing on learning how to write the letters themselves! Now they are just colored dots and she is learning them much more quickly!
I have been progressively making new letter sheets with fewer dots and in smaller sizes, and she has learned to write most of her letters in about two weeks!
Hope this helps a bit!
I would add play dough and threading to your list. Play dough strengthens finger muscles and threading helps them become more aware of what their fingers are doing. One of mine wrote beautifully at 3, (she could write whatever I spelt for her but wasn’t reading much) she was the one always coloring and drawing and loved fine motor activities. So I think it’s more than just practicing the letters although that is a means to the same goal. So do both drawing, play dough, threading and tracing letters. Also try mazes for pencil control…and tracing patterns… Tiny finger foods like corn and peas… Ok I will shut up now :laugh:
@Kerileanne, thanks for your idea! I still have like 4 boxes of red dots from before I started LM (thank heavens for that change) and I’ve been wondering what I could do with these dots.
@Mandabplus3, ah, such logical ideas, but I didn’t think about them so thank you so much for posting.
Are your kids also doing brachiation? Do you think hanging / swinging activities have contributed to their writing and fine motor skills?
Well the one who wrote early was encouraged to hang and swing, we had roman rings in the backyard swing set. But it’s a completely different set of muscles so I doubt that had much to do with it. Also her sister was a year behind her in writing ( but well ahead of her skills in neat coloring in and drawing) did the same amount of hanging around. ( and an extraordinary amount of jumping and climbing :mad: )
I would put it don’t to time. My time mostly. I had more time to spend waiting for her to finish the finger foods without offering to help, more time to let her colour, more time to sit and practice letter formation. She also spent more time at daycare…two days a week from 18 months til school with the occasional 6 month break. So was drawing and painting and building alot. I think overall if you spend some conscious time daily developing the fine motor skills and drawing, then teach the letters (with correct stroke order!) you could get most kids there by 3. Many earlier. I hate to admit it but boys a bit later.
My son I thought had no chance any time soon ( he just turned 4)He just looked so uncoordinated with a pencil, but some daily practice for only three weeks has seen HUGE improvement in his pencil control.
ThoughtbI would add that we also do several Montessori-inspired activities for building hand strength as well, and a few of our own…
We use clothes-pins to pinch and unpinch around a large bowl! I have painted numbers and letters on the clippy part so that we play a spelling or counting game as we do this!
I bought several sets of the preschool style large Tweezer sets for science activities and we practice transferring small objects from bowl to bowl or plate to plate, usually with a maths activity because they are her favorite!
We also love bead stringing, noodle stringing, and lacing activities for building coordination!
I swear that signing has helped a great deal with manual dexterity!
A would not leave my keys alone, so I strung together a handful of small suitcase and padlock locks together and gave her a ring of keys (with some that don’t fit anything lol ) to practice hand/eye coordination, logic, handedness, etc! I have been utterly shocked at the results.
I allow her to take strung cereal necklaces out with her as a snack…but only if she strings them herself! She has become quite adept at stringing cheerios on a bit of yarn!
I found a set of letter stencils, hard plastic for uppercase, lower case, and cursive that you hold down and fit the tip of a pencil into to practice writing letters…while I want her to do it freeform, this builds confidence for her and practices her spelling as well!
We do several IPad apps that teach writing…our favorite is iwritewords by gdiplus…
One thing that probably isn’t feasible for many…we do a lot of both indoor/outdoor rock climbing…so much so that we have turned our two-car garage into a climbing gym…A has a slab built for her with child-sized holds that each have a letter of the alphabet stamped into them. On a rope and in a harness, she climbs from ‘a to z’ supporting her body weight and shouting out each letter as she achieves new heights! I will try to get her on video doing it as it is not all that difficult to make a child sized wall and climbing is truly one of the most total-body activities possible! ( my husband and I are certified climbing instructors and have coached children at all levels around the world!)
I got my boy 3 writing templates from School-rite for upper case, lowercase, and numbers and he would trace within these templates onto plain paper and would do it here and there, no set time. He actually considered it fun since it wasn’t writing 20 A’s, 20 B’s etc. These templates show the order in which to write each letter as well. Within a couple of months he showed a comfort level with writing letters that I truly did not expect from him. He is now 4 1/2 and his penmanship is so improved that we are working on actual writing short paragraphs within the lines properly.
I had also heard that boys develop that ability much later than girls so I was not really trying hard to get him to develop this skill but I really believe that the templates helped since it was “fun” for him to do and it might help to learn to better control the pencil while writing since it confines the pencil to the spaces just meant for the letter. He was always so proud to show me how well he did his letters(from the template) He may be a late bloomer with his writing but I’m proud of my little guy and he’s proud of his “pretty writing”.
Of course as a baby and toddler we also did all the activities most children do with lacing, beading, puzzles,coloring, painting (but neatness of coloring, drawing or painting was never emphasized), legos, etc. Now that I think of it, in the past month he has become a bit of a lego addict-just as his writing has had a major improvement. He must be working those little finger muscles real hard getting those little pieces together…
drawing, play dough, threading and tracing letters. Also try mazes for pencil control…and tracing patterns… Tiny finger foods like corn and peas… Ok I will shut up now :laugh: