If you are looking for pre-writing activities that help introduce kids to writing letters, take a look at a few of my favorites below.
1) Magic Board Printing Practice Cards
Magnadoodles are fantastic and fun for kids to draw and scribble on, which is great because it allows for the development of future writing skills. However, if you’d like to add a challenge, this Magic Board comes with separate see-through printing cards that fit right on the screen. The cards help with pencil control and tracing, and are an excellent idea for teaching letter formation and alignment.
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2) Follow The Dot Stamps
Kids will love tracing letters and words that they just spelled out with these awesome Follow the Dots Stamps. Also playing with stamps is a great fine motor prep activity before writing.
3) Ready Set Paste is a craft set that involves fine motor tasks such as folding tissue paper into little pieces, unsticking stickers, and applying glue to paper.
4) Magnatab
Magnatab comes with a magnetic stylus that pulls the beads to the surface as kids trace the letters. The Magnatab provides sensory feedback, strengthens hands, works on pencil control, and reinforces letter formation and size.
5) Magnetic Mazes
Magnetic Mazes are a great way to develop pencil control and build hand-eye coordination. Also using shorter magnetic pens like the one above encourages a correct grasp pattern.
6) Pattern Stencils are a fun way to teach kids how to make basic patterns that compose all the letters. This helps build muscle memory and prepares for letter formation.
7) Find the Letter Activity Center
Find the Letter is a great way for kids to not only work on letter recognition but to also develop hand strength (using the tweezers). Hand strength is needed for a good pencil grasp and control as kids begin to write.
8) Write-On Wipe-Off Let’s Trace is a dry erase activity book with mazes and puzzles that encourages kids to draw and trace basic shapes like horizontal and vertical lines, circles, and squares.
9) Scribble Maze
The idea of Scribble Maze is to guide a cup with a marble along the maze without letting it fall inside the holes. This works on hand-eye coordination, motor control, and encourages a correct grasp pattern. All of these skills are needed in order to write.