Welcome to Week 2!
If you are joining us for the first time, I encourage you to first read Play to Write-Write to Read: Week 1. Then, be sure to come back and join us for this week’s play group activities!
Welcome back! I have heard so many great responses from all you hard-working moms out there who really enjoyed the play time last week! If you haven’t already, I encourage you to revisit last week’s post to see a couple great link ups where other mom’s shared some of their families favorite writing activities.
Just a reminder those of you who are joining our Play Group each week, you are asked to please do 2 things:
1. Comment on how these activities worked or didn’t work with your child. Feel free to reply to one another to encourage and offer your advice as well! This will also be great to hold us all accountable to one another to actually follow through… don’t we all need a little of that!?
2. Share: Bloggers-you can link up a writing activity you’ve done with your child in the past to share with everyone. You are totally welcome to reteach the same strategies on your blogs and then link up those posts the following week (please do be sure to link back). Non-Bloggers & Bloggers we encourage you to teach/share these activities with another mom friend. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if more and more parents began to learn Best Practices for writing to ‘play’ with their kids; these types of activities are not just for teachers! Let’s empower each other by sharing!
Before we begin, I have to share a quick helpful guide to Hand Grasps for Toddler-Preschoolers!
Thanks to Jess from Structured Play for sharing this awesome guide on her post last week!
(The FUNdamentals section focuses on guiding your toddler/preschooler through the basics of developing the fine motor and gross motor skills needed for the physical act of writing, but doing so with ‘fun’ activity.)
1. Strengthen fine motor skills
2. Improve visual perception skills (specifically left to right eye movement)
3. Teach child how to correctly hold a marker/crayon
4. Have Fun!
Tracing Lines Directions:
1. Provide Tracing Line Printables or draw some of your own on a piece of paper.
2. Encourage your child to trace the lines (always left to right). Hold their hand for the first few times so they get the feel for how the correct movement feels.
3. Then, challenge them to try tracing the lines on their own! Encourage them to continually try to do better (staying on the line) each time.
*Lakeshore Learning has a great set of 2 whiteboard book for beginning writers called a Getting Ready to Print Practice Books, many different types of traceable lines! Big Brother loves these and enjoys taking them with us to practice in the car or use while I am cooking dinner!
(Slide these pages into plastic sheet protectors for multiple uses!)
(The Writing Practice section focuses on a new ‘Best Practice’ Writing Strategy each week. A ‘Best Practice’ writing strategy is a technique or methodology that, through experience and research, has proven to reliably lead to creating strong writers.)
Writing Practice 1: Make Your Own Writing Sensory Gel Pad
1. Learn to write/trace letters, numbers, shapes, etc.
2. Demonstrate that spoken words can be written words
3. Improve visual perception skills (specifically left to right eye movement)
4. Practice basic motions of forming letters, shapes, numbers, etc.
5. Have fun and connect with your child.
Make Your Own Writing Sensory Gel Pad Directions
- Large (gallon sized) Ziploc Bag
- Large container of hair gel ($1 at local dollar stores)
- Food Coloring
- Glitter (optional)
- Duct Tape
- Place a large letter, number, or shape under the gel pad on a table. Encourage your child to trace the letter. When they are ready, remove the paper under the bag and have them try forming the letter on their own.
- Place a paper with their name in large print under the bag. Encourage them to trace their name. When they are ready, remove the paper under the bag and have them try to write their name on their own.
- Play Tic-Tac-Toe; this gives your child extra practice on forming their shapes and curved lines.
- Place some of the Tracing Line pages under the gel pad and encourage your child to practice tracing them.