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Promoting writing: irresistible pens and pencils

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childrens writing ideas

>>>> Download our ABCs and 123s guide here

If you’re looking for ways to promote literacy and get children writing, one easy but effective way to encourage writing is to make it irresistible.

Don’t hide the paper and pencils away in a drawer – set up a creation station! Provide an assortment of papers in different colours, shapes and sizes and pots of pencils you know they’ll love. Whether they’re a sparkly, glittery, superhero, football or dinosaur kinda kid, it’s easy and inexpensive to find a few pens to suit their passion. Another sure way to get my girls interested is to mix in some ‘real grown-up’ supplies from our home office – highlighter pens are the tops! Add in some envelopes for letter writing and a roll of stickers to transform into postage stamps.

literacy resources
Can you find some supplies tonight and set up a creation station ready to surprise the children in the morning? Bet you can!

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ABCs and 123s : fun learning activities for letters and math

All our favourite literacy  activities, all in one place :: download our ABCs and 123s guide here. 

Teaching children to dress themselves

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teaching children to dress themselves
How do you teach children to dress themselves? One playful idea is to practise on dolly instead.  Being a big helper and assisting dolly can be less frustrating than struggling with your own clothes, so this might be just the trick needed to help a learner tackle buttons and velcro.

Find some dolly-sized clothes with zips, buttons and toggles – or stitch some on yourself – and then include them in your play. Trying to teach children to dress themselves when you’re in a hurry in the morning, or just about to head out the door, doesn’t create the best situation to master a new skill. By including this is in play, children gets lots of time and opportunity to practise.

For more tips see our staring school guide to putting on your own coat and shoes

How do you help your children learn to tackle zips and buttons?

Counting ladybirds

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ladybird number game

Make a set of number ladybirds, add in some stickers and have some counting fun.

Taking a child’s passion and using it to practise a new skill works really well. I know a child who *loves* stickers – that simple process of peel and stick, peel and stick, gives them immense satisfaction! So I thought I’d use this in a different way to help us work on our counting too. Ladybirds with spots lend themselves to counting games really well, and sticker dots are inexpensive and easy to get hold of.

To start your ladybird counting, first make your ladybirds.

  1. Cut out some ladybird shapes from card.
  2. Write on them numbers one to ten.
  3. Let the children lose with the stickers – putting the right number of spots on each ladybird.

Here are some of the ideas we played:

  • Can you find the ladybird with a number one?
  • Can you add the right number of stickers to match the number?
  • Which ladybird has got the most stickers?
  • Can you line up the ladybirds from one to ten, or from ten to one.
  • This ladybird has two spots – can you find a ladybird with one spot more?
  • How old are you? Can you find a ladybird with the same number of spots?

Mark making with play dough

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Help your child learn pre-writing skills through mark making with play dough.
mark making with play dough

Mark making with play dough

We are huge fans of play dough in our house. We’ve just made a new batch using our favourite play dough recipe with some orange essence added to bring some smelly sensory fun.

I find play dough is a great activity for after school, especially if we have a mixed age group of children playing. It’s very relaxing as it has the lovely touchy-feely aspect of sensory play and there’s no right or wrong way to play with it – so however old you are (grandparents included!) you can enjoy it, without finding it frustrating or needing any grown-up interference.

mark making with play dough

Today I thought I’d mention how fabulous play dough is on the road to learning to write. While you might not associate dough with holding a pencil, all the kneading and shaping you do as you play is just right for building up fine motor skills – giving little fingers lots of practise in mobility, grasping and manipulating.

pre-writing practise with play dough

If your child is showing an interest it’s easy to extend the play by providing something to ‘write’ with, whether it’s a blunt pencil, stick, feather or other tool. By sitting alongside your child as they play you can model mark making, gently suggesting different patterns to try and seeing if they’d like to copy.

mark making activities for preschool

Try using a variety of marks which correspond to the shapes included when you eventually begin to write letter characters: horizontal and vertical lines, zigzags, circles, waves and loops.

You might find that children who are otherwise reluctant to ‘write’ do enjoy this kind of mark making. It’s a good option to introduce early writing skills to children who show little interest in pencils and paper.

Sensory play tubs

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IMG_1787

What’s a sensory tub? Basically it’s a box of goodies that children can explore. They’re easy to put together using things from around the home and give the children lots of touchy, feely, exploring possibilities. There’s a lot of science, maths and hand-eye co-ordination that’s incorporated too. If you’d like to make one all you need to do is:

  1. Grab a tub: a washing up bowl, a cardbaord box, a storage box. You need something which is large enough for your children to get their hands inside so they can have a good dig around and with sides high enough to hold the contents but low enough so your children can sit beside the box and reach inside easily.
  2. Add a main ingredient: water, sand, cotton wool balls, dry pasta, oat flakes, shredded paper are all great options. You want something which is interesting to feel and manipulate.
  3. Mix in some treasures. It’s always fun to hide things inside the tub for the children to discover: ice cubes in water, little toys, fir cones and shells.
  4. Have some tools on hand. Sometimes children need nothing more than a tub of water to splash about in but you can extend the play and learning possibilities if you provide some items they can use with the tub. Scoops and spoons for digging, buckets and pans to fill, ice cube and dip trays for sorting, jugs for pouring, tongs or a fishing net for picking up.
  5. Let the children play. The idea is to provide a tub of interesting textures, shapes and sounds and let the children explore. Sit back and observe them play and notice how they chose to investigate the tub. Are they interested in pouring, or counting, or collecting? You can chat to them while they play and look at the things they discover but sometimes I think it’s good to sit back and let the children lead the way.

Do you have any favourite ingredients for sensory tubs?

happily shared with Science Sunday and Preschool Corner Tot School and Preschool Corner

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