What brings parents and children from all over the city to Chandler Public Libraries? Storytime! High Five is a great addition to Storytimes at Chandler Public Library, and introduces five key concepts in early literacy: Talk, Sing, Read, Write, and Play. Read on to learn more about how to encourage pre-writing skills in your 0-5-year-old.
Your job, as your child’s first teacher, isn’t to send them off to preschool or Kindergarten reading and writing at a 2nd grade level. Your job is to expose them to experiences that will make it easier for them to grasp all the amazing stuff there is to learn. For instance, writing.
Work on those important pre-writing skills with fun craft projects. Your child can skip the pencil grip struggles and get to the business of learning to write in Kindergarten much quicker if she has had lots of early exposure to activities that mimic grasping a writing utensil. Ensure that those activities are fun and engaging, with little or no rules, and your child will be well on her way to writing success. These activities shouldn’t be an effort to directly teach your child to write letters or hold a pencil, but to offer your child opportunities to explore her world in a similar manner.
Consider the example of coloring. Children’s coloring books are an introduction to the task of writing via scribbling with a crayon. As the child develops mastery of the crayon the pictures become cleaner and more recognizable. And when your child first plays with a paint brush and a cookie tray filled with salt, it will most likely be a very messy affair. But don’t avoid doing it, just take it outside or throw down a sheet to make clean up easier. Allow him this temporarily-messy experience on a regular basis and soon the salt will stop flying and recognizable shapes will begin to appear, and then the letters in his name and so on.
Offer these types of experiences often, changing them out to keep them fresh and interesting. If your child isn’t writing the entire alphabet by preschool, don’t worry. He will enter school with a strong mastery of manipulating an item with his hand to create shapes and a few letters. His teacher will thank you and happily take it from there!
Check out our Pinterest page for more pre-writing activities to share with your child.