Pre Writing Skills Through Play

Way before children learn letter names or numerals there should be hundreds of opportunities to play and explore with them in a variety of experiences. Way before a child ever picks up a pencil to write, they should be provided hundreds of opportunities to strengthen their hand muscles and fine motor skills to be able to tackle handwriting. It is developmentally appropriate to "practice" letter writing with mature hand grip around the age of 5 or 6, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about and play with letter sounds, formation and names way before then!

So how do we do this? Through play of course! We can ditch the worksheets, flashcards and flashy light up electronic toys and just provide play opportunities. Learning letter names and numerals goes far beyond memorization and when we ground our learning in play the memorization happens naturally vs being forced. We play with paint, popsicle sticks, play dough, stickers, and dirt!

Letters and numerals are created using different types of lines and curves. We can provide opportunities for children to explore with letters and numerals by looking at the lines that make them. For example, the letter C is made of one big curve that starts at the top and curves around to the bottom, but the letter D has a straight vertical line with a curved line attached to it and the letter N has two straight vertical lines and one diagonal line. We can provide even more exposure to letters and numerals through our conversations with children. When we are playing with diggers in the dirt we can state "The /d/d/d/digger is in the /d/d/d/dirt! Those two words have the same beginning sound!" Later, when your child goes to explore the letter D or create it using lines and curves you can say, "Yeah! We were playing in the /d/d/d/dirt the other day with the /d/d/d/digger and you made the letter D /d/d/d/" You can find different letters from their name in books or other signs at the grocery store or on a neighborhood walk.

Providing these play opportunities to mold play dough into letters, search for letters in rice and match or sort them by which letters are made up of straight lines and which are made with curved lines and which are made with both will strengthen so many skills along the way, not just mastery of letter names or numerals.

Some benefits to play based pre writing skills include:

Visual Discrimination: The ability to recognize details in visual pictures and identify similarities and differences

Fine Motor Control: These are the movements we make with small muscles in our hands and as our children mold play dough, dig in rice, move scissors or manipulate popsicle sticks they are strengthening these tiny hand muscles

Executive Functioning Skills: Sorting helps develop executive functioning skills, which are important brain skills that help with memory, attention and problem solving

You probably know by now I am all about the 🧠brain science and there's some incredible new research out called the "Science of Reading" and it's helping educators and caregivers around the country learn how the brain actually understands and manipulates letter sounds and different parts of language to learn to read. I have linked some additional resources at the bottom for you to explore if you are interested how children learn to read in kindergarten and beyond ... but for now let's go play!

Questions? Comments? Share them below or on social media

What questions do you have about pre writing skills or play based learning?

Additional Resources:

The Science of Reading