Pre-Writing Fun

My youngest guy, Shmitty, is ever eager to begin doing "school work".
So to keep his little mind, fingers and body busy we do a bunch of
different pre-K activities together.
Recently we have been doing a lot of pre-writing activities and I just
wanted to share some. To start, I think writing should be personal
to keep the kids engaged. I always start out by teaching my kids how
to write their name. Being able to write your own name is a big deal
to preschoolers because it fills them with a great since of pride and
accomplishment.
Magic Finger is a little game I play with my son to get him to
practice proper stroke techniques. I write his name on a dry-erase
board and he makes it disappear with his finger. This game is a huge
hit. He loves doing magic and often ask to play this.

Boy Wonder working his magic

You can use the dry-erase board for teaching letters, numbers and
shapes. Try a simple game of "Potter says". Potter says make the
triangle disappear and other similar directions.
For those curves and circular shapes remember to teach the kiddies to
go counterclockwise. If they learn this early on it will make writing
a lot easier.                                                                                                                                                  Make my name is another thing we do often, it involves using household
things to spell out his name. Kids love their name, they love glue and
they love crafts. Trust me you can never wear this project out. You
can make your kid's name out of beans, rice, pasta, twigs, sand,

cotton, you name it. A huge plus of this activity is that it will
provide a variety of tactile examples of their name. They can use
these not only to practice tracing their names, but also to compare
different textures.








With the help of my oldest kids we did this little fun
activity.

cotton, sand, rice, crumbled paper, pasta and even acorn tops make up our alphabet

Then we wrote out everyone's name in our house, placed the letters in
their spots and then tallied them up. In our family O is the most
popular letter.
Have fun trying these activities.