Essential Pre-Writing Skills for Kids: A Guide to Building a Strong Foundation

Writing and reading are inseparable skills. If the alphabet and writing had not been invented, there would be no need for reading. To be a strong writer, you need to be a strong reader, and the opposite is true as well - good readers become better writers.

Why are Pre-Writing Skills Important?

Pre-Writing skills strengthen fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, and visual discrimination, which are important skills for reading and writing. The bonus is that doing activities that build towards learning to read and write boosts your child’s confidence, supports independence, and prepares them for academic success. 

1. Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills require control of small muscles used in activities such as eating, buttoning clothes, tying shoes, drawing, and writing. These tasks require the coordination of muscles and joints from the shoulder to the elbow, wrist, hand, and fingers. 

Strength for fine motor activities is highly dependent on strong core body strength, so it’s important for your child to be physically active. Outdoor experiences, sports, and playground equipment are great ways to build core body strength. 

To help your child build fine motor control, use the following suggestions to make muscles stronger and reduce fatigue. Before you follow any of these suggestions and because you know your child best, be sure to consider safety and provide supervision.

1. Do wall push-aways. These are like push-ups but use the wall in place of the floor. Begin with flat hands and progress to using fingertips to push away from the wall.
2. Play finger games such as doing an itsy-bitsy spider walk where your thumbs alternate in touching each of the fingers on the opposite hand (right thumb to left pinky, left thumb to right pinky, right thumb to left ring finger, left thumb to right ring finger, etc.) When you get to the thumb/index finger, repeat thumb/finger touches in the opposite order.
3. Play with fidget and squeeze toys, and stretch hair elastics or strong rubber bands by pulling them apart using both hands 
4. Encourage your child to dress themselves, tie shoelaces, zip zippers, brush/floss teeth, and use cutlery to feed themselves
5. Toys and Crafts: Cut with scissors, thread beads, build with blocks and bricks, make puzzles, sew by hand, lace toys, use tongs and tweezers, build puzzles, play musical instruments, use modeling clay, and play games that have smaller parts
6. Trace letters and shapes: The Alphabites Game Pack cards have tactile, finger traceable letters. 
7. Scribble, draw, write, color, and paint using a variety of tools and surfaces; practice drawing lines, circles, and loops that lead to letter formation 

2. Hand-Eye Coordination

Hand-eye coordination is the ability to use the eyes to guide hand movements. This skill is needed for tasks, such as writing, that require both visual and motor skills. When your child draws or writes, they need to know where to place their pencil on the paper and how to move their hand to form letter shapes.

Hand-eye coordination will be improved by doing the fine motor activities listed above. Sports are another great way to build both of these skills.  

1. Practice rolling, catching, and throwing balls of various sizes and shapes
2. Play games that use equipment such as hockey sticks, bats, rackets, and paddles
3. Do running and jumping activities using targets for landing or hopping off of
4. Learn to ride scooters, tricycles, and bikes
5. Play musical instruments

When your child does activities that challenge their visual and motor systems, they develop strong fine motor and hand-eye coordination skills which support overall physical growth and brain development.

3. Visual Discrimination

Visual discrimination is the ability to tell the difference between various shapes, sizes, colors, and other characteristics of things we see. It helps us recognize similarities and differences in objects or images. Your child needs visual discrimination to read and write. This helps them form legible letter shapes, tell the difference between similar looking letters such as b, d, p, and q,  and print letters where they go on the lines.

To help your child practice visual discrimination skills, talk about similarities and differences, size, shape, color, patterns, and sequences when you are: 

1. Reading books with them
2. Practicing letter shapes and sounds
3. Playing with toys and games
4. Climbing on playground equipment
5. Baking and cooking
6. Enjoying neighborhood or nature walks
7. Crafting - making patterns and sequences
8. Sorting items - laundry, supplies, tools, cutlery

Visual Discrimination enhances overall brain development and helps your child do everyday tasks, learn to read and write, develop math skills, and problem solve. 

Joyful Learning

Remember to keep the learning enjoyable for you and your child. At Juneberry Learning we encourage bite sized learning using multisensory, playful activities. Providing a positive learning environment will strengthen your relationship and help your child be a confident and motivated learner. 

Summary

Reading and writing are invented technologies that have to be learned. They do not come naturally. To be a strong reader you need to know letter shapes and sounds, and how to blend and segment words. To be a strong writer, you need all those skills plus fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, and visual discrimination skills.  

Pre-Writing skills strengthen muscles and help a child see similarities and differences in shapes so they can control their hand to form letters and words. This makes learning to write an enjoyable and worthwhile adventure that builds confidence, supports independence, and prepares your child for future success.

Children learn best when they are having fun. Your gentle guidance and support will turn challenging tasks into rewarding experiences. Bite size learning, loads of encouragement, and celebrating small wins makes learning a joyful adventure.