Fun Ways to Enhance Pre-Literacy Skills in Young Learners: Part 2

As a speech-language pathologist who works primarily with toddlers and preschool-age children, I  design therapy activities that enhance pre-literacy skills. In part 1 of this blog post series, I discussed ways to support early reading skills. In this post, I want to discuss strategies and activities to support early writing skills.

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Here is an overview of milestones for the development of early writing skills:

1-2 Years

• Holds a large crayon or marker
• May scribble, especially when another person is writing

2-3 Years

• Scribbles using wavy and circular lines
  
• Enjoys drawing and scribbling
  

3-5 Years

• Uses squiggles to represent a list of words or a story to be told
  
• Experiments with writing letters, numbers, or letter-like forms
  
• Prints some capital letters
• Knows the difference between writing and drawing
  
• Copes/imitates simple lines, circles, and crosses
• Understands that writing has a purpose
• Prints own name
• Writes strings of letters in random order
• Writes one letter or word to stand for a whole sentence or idea

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Strategies and Activities for Supporting Early Writing Skills

1. Encourage gross-motor play to build upper body and hand strength (such as hanging from monkey bars, doing the wheelbarrow walk, climbing on the jungle gym, digging in the sandbox).
2. Provide hands-on activities to promote the development of fine motor skills needed for writing (stringing beads, using tongs and tweezers, playing with Lego's, using a hole punch, pinching clothespins, completing peg puzzles, squeezing and kneading Play-doh, picking beads out of TheraPutty, putting small items into small containers, lacing, buttoning, and so on).
   
3. Draw child's attention to your own daily writing activities (writing a grocery list, writing a birthday card, addressing a letter, writing important events on the calendar).
4. Provide opportunities to explore print with a wide variety of writing utensils (chalk, markers, colored pencils, crayons, finger paints, paint brushes).
5. Offer a variety of surfaces for the child to draw/write on (chalkboard, clipboard, cardboard boxes).
6. Invite the child to write on different types of paper such as envelopes, sticky notes, spiral notebooks, graph paper, or carbon paper.
7. Encourage writing and drawing on a vertical surface (easel, dry erase board, chalkboard).
8. Offer interesting toys that encourage drawing and writing (stencils, Spirograph toy, Boogie Board writing tablet, MagnaDoodle).
9. Provide a variety of unique writing utensils (feathery pens, sparkly pencils, 4-color click pens, scented markers, highlighters, a squiggle wiggle vibrating pen, washable window markers).
10. Encourage child to use the correct tripod grasp by offering broken crayons and pieces of broken chalk.
11. Invite the child to open junk mail and clip coupons (that you don't actually want to use!).
    
12. Spend time coloring with the young child. Find interesting coloring books or print online coloring pages based on the child's favorite animals or cartoon characters.
    
13. Provide writing experiences during different play schemes:

• Toy kitchen: offer a pad of paper and a pencil so child can write down a grocery list or a recipe (get a grocery list pad at the dollar store; offer blank recipe cards)
• Playing restaurant: have child take food orders from other people (get an order pad at the office supply store)
• Toy office: on a small desk provide an old keyboard, sticky notes, cup of writing utensils, small hand-held pencil sharpener, child-safe scissors, hole punch, tape dispenser, large button calculator, desk calendar, blank checkbook registers, and so on.

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When learning is fun and relevant, it is intrinsically motivating to the child. That means the child participates in the activity because she wants to...not because she earned a reward for doing so. I hope you find these strategies and activities useful. Let me know if there are any others you'd like to share!

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