Writing is a vital means of communication and an essential component of education. However, in today’s technology-driven society, children are rarely offered opportunities to practice and enhance their writing skills. Many parents are left wondering how to teach writing to kids.
It takes time and effort to develop great writing skills, and it can be a difficult undertaking. Fortunately, there are many things mommies and daddies can do at home to assist their children to develop their writing skills. So let’s find out some interesting methods to teach writing to kids.
How to Teach Writing to Kids?
Preschoolers are generally the ones who try writing for the first time. At this age, their vocabulary increases significantly, and kids begin to grasp symbols, such as letters and numbers. They watch Mommy and Daddy scribbling away on a note or a grocery list and want to do the same, and that is why you might find your child scribbling incomprehensible notes with circles, zigzags, and other almost-letter shapes.
At the same time, how to teach a three years old kid to write is more complicated than simply handing him a pencil and showing him the letters. Given below are some basic teaching methods for teaching your little one to write letters.
Prepare the Muscles
The first and most important step in teaching three years old kids to write is to build up their muscles. For this, you can start with some basic activities like painting with a crayon or playing with dough. When we were kids, we started writing on a slate with a piece of chalk right? Why was it so? Chalks and crayons are smaller and wider. So it is easier for the kids to grasp them.
Scribbling with crayons and markers is a foundational skill for learning how to write. Fine motor abilities are honed by doing things like tying shoes, fastening buttons, handling utensils, and many other daily activities including holding a paintbrush, threading beads, and cutting with scissors. So if your kid loves art, encourage them, because help them not only to write but also to develop good handwriting skills.
1. Let them Play with Dough
Allow kids to have a good time with the dough. Allow kids to do whatever they want with the dough; it doesn’t have to be flawless. Play-Doh and other clays help to develop hand muscle and dexterity. Making letters with clay is a good idea to keep children engaged and at the same time improves their fine movements such as holding a crayon or pencil.
Playing with clay can help you relax, release excess energy, focus better and express your feelings. They will forget all the worries and will also train their muscles without even their knowledge.
2. Cutting with a Scissor
The opening and closing movement of cutting with scissors help toddlers develop fine motor skills, which are little muscles in their hands. Holding a crayon or pencils, as well as gripping and manipulating items, require these muscles. Encourage them to use scissors only in your presence. Tell them to draw a picture and cut it using a scissor.
Also read: Write a Number Story on Addition for Kids? Here’s a Guide to Master these Math Problems
Encourage them to Keep a Good Posture
Children may have difficulty writing, particularly if they are unable to grasp the pencil and paper appropriately at the same time. That is why it is critical to teach our children good posture so that they can broaden their wrists and properly support the pencil when writing.
We can start providing them directions to learn writing after they are comfortable holding a pencil and paper. This is when toddlers begin to broaden their vocabularies and realize that symbols, numbers, and letters all have meaning. Mentioned below are the correct postures, not only to write but also to develop good handwriting.
- Feet flat on the floor while writing
- Should and neck relaxed
- Knees at a 90-degree angle and thighs parallel to the floor
- Pivot from the hips and stand up straight with your back to the desk.
- The nondominant arm can support body weight; the body should face the desk squarely.
Writing is Possible Through Fun Activities
As parents, we know that frequent practice will go a long way toward assisting our kids in improving their performance. But how do we encourage kids who have been turned off from writing for a long period to put pen to paper and record the necessary time to improve their writing skills? The solution is to make writing enjoyable! Here are some kids learning activities to teach them to write.
1. Surface Tracing
Show your youngster a letter and invite him or her to notice how it is made or curved. Then have your youngster try to trace it on a table, window, door, or another surface from memory. You could also trace a letter on any material and ask your youngster to identify it.
Make use of a huge or tiny surface. Make your letters big or small. If your kid is having trouble tracing or guessing the letters, make them put their hand on yours as you trace the letter or vice versa.
2. Let’s Talk About How to Form Letters.
For example, B has a straight line and two curves coming out to the right or you can say two bubbles are joined together. C looks like a crescent moon, an E is like a toothless comb, a V has two slanted lines that meet at the bottom, and so on. Describe it to your child, and then have your youngster do the same. While looking at, writing, or tracing a letter, talk about letter construction.
3. Connect the Dots
On a piece of paper, make dots in the shape of letters. To form the alphabet, your child will play connect the dots. To form the alphabet, your child will play connect the dots. Kids will use their imagination to connect the dots. You can dot up a sheet with this technique for teaching writing such that when the dots are joined, they spell out a whole word.
Also read: Spelling Games For Children: New Activity Ideas and How To Play!
Encourage them to Write
Take a positive attitude toward your child’s writing and find nice things to say about it. Is this correct? Creative? Interesting? Respond to your child’s thoughts, whether they are expressed vocally or in writing. Make it apparent that you’re more enthusiastic in what the writing says than in how it was written, which implies concentrating on “what” the youngster wrote rather than “how” it was written. It’s usually best to overlook little mistakes, especially when your youngster is still putting his or her thoughts together.
Summing up
When working with a youngster or student, remember to keep calm always, even if you think they should be getting something they aren’t. If you become frustrated with them, they may become worried, angry, inferior, or foolish, leading to a less fruitful learning session.
If there is no instruction, writing the letters at that age might be rocket science. Toddlers are in the process of learning and are eager to pick up all they observe. How to teach writings to kids is no longer a worry with the right teaching methods. So start practising today itself.
