Love, play, learn!
We have a clear idea about the important role of play for children’s development. Through our mission, we have always told you this: play is the key to know the world and a way to ignite children’s creativity. Creativity, on its part, is the key to opening the door to valuable learning in life, like writing.
You have always considered writing only as a skill to be learned at school, right? Kids can learn writing through play even before starting school. Read this article and discover how playing can support children to learn this academic skill.
Every day we need to write to complete our task. Writing well is key to success at work, school and, trivially, in our daily life, whether we are filling out a form at the doctor’s office. Encouraging your children to develop strong writing skills have a positive impact on their whole life.
How you can help your kids to become stronger writers
First suggestion: drawing is the first writing, so encourage your child to draw.
Children can draw at a very young age, and this is a valid exercise to express themselves. Moreover, the act of tracing a line on paper concentrates the mind on the movement of the hands, helping them to develop good manipulative skills. It also improves hand and eye coordination and sharpens kids’ finger muscles. These are the preparatory stages for writing acquisition.
So, for a developing writer, truer words are never spoken. Drawing a picture provides a pre-writer with the opportunity to plan, brainstorm, and develop new ideas. When children draw a picture, they tell a story that begins when they start talking about it. Ask questions to keep the writer move forward. This step is essential to anticipate the writing process and literacy.
You also should prompt kids to write about the picture through random strings of letters and copied text. Kids can title the picture, for instance. If your kid has drawn beach scenery, the theme of the draw could be Sunday Sandcastles. They can copy this text. It is fundamental for pre-writers to learn how to make their words match their pictures to understand that these represent ideas that can be turned into words on paper.
And if your children need some incentives to start drawing you can invite them to do it with a blackboard with coloured chalks that are almost always successful. With All-in-1 Easel, they can draw on a blackboard or its magnetic whiteboard side and, if that is not enough, they can use the paper roll for painting with the paints in the plots inserted in the wooden shelf. With this variety of play approaches, making a draw will be so irresistible!
If the first step to learning writing is letter recognition, you can foster this learning by inviting your children to write their names. You can use a simple tool to better succeed in the goal: colours, which help memorization. Recognizing and memorizing the alphabet can be enjoyable with these different colored letters. Children can also use them on a magnetic whiteboard when they can write the names of the whole family members.
Another fun way to learn letters is using a fun puzzle-like Chunky Alphabet Puzzle. To insert a letter in the appropriate space, children have to manipulate it for memorizing the shape starting from the touch. It is a good introduction for children to capital letters to take their first steps towards reading and writing.
And if fining motor skills are needed to help children grip pens and pencils correctly and form letter shapes across a page, manipulating play will give children the chance to strengthen the muscles in their fingers.
Have you ever considered that writing is a skill that can pass through the kitchen? You can cook some cakes with your kids, letting them manipulate the dough.
You can also achieve it by using rounded-tip scissors to cut paper. Are you searching for a fun idea for teaching kids to use scissors? You can download here our papercraft activity for printing, cutting and assembling. Use scissors and start playing to have hours of fun together.
Writing is an academic skill that you learn after a long process that includes several stages and abilities to be acquired. Through play, everything becomes simpler and more fun.
The activities we propose are preparatory for much more structured learnings that children will do at school. Try them with your kids for introducing writing.
So, play and draw with them to form the future bestseller writers! Let us know if the activities we suggested work, and above all, keep us updated on the progress of your little ones!
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