Writing Readiness Skills

Writing Readiness Skills, or otherwise known as Pre-writing Skills, are the fundamentals that your child need to develop before they are able to write. These basic skills contribute to how ready they are to begin writing and impact how your child is able to hold and use a pencil. It also contributes to their ability to draw, write, copy, and colour effectively. Ultimately, these skills help them to produce legible writing. 

Skills Required

When a baby develops, they typically develop their gross motor skills before their fine motor skills come into play. In order for the fine motor movements needed to handwriting to develop, your child needs to have strong gross motor skills and movements to support them. 

• Upper Body Strength: 
• Strong shoulders to control hand movements for good pencil control 
• Strong neck to keep the head upright
• Strong core to sit upright
• Hand and Finger Strength: 
• Strong fingers in order to grasp objects
• Hand-Eye Coordination: 
• Ability to process information received from the eyes, to control, guide and direct the hands in the performance of a task

Activities to Improve Pre-Writing Skills

Working on your child's pre-writing skills (lines and strokes) through hands-on activities help to naturally develop your child's hand strength and fine motor skills, which includes letter formation, line orientation, spacing, and grasps. These activities also introduce simple writing rules to your child that can facilitate their writing in the future, such as writing left to write, as well as recognising shape and letter formation. 

Threading or Weaving

Threading is a fun way for your child to work on their hand-eye coordination, while improving their finger dexterity. Introduce bigger objects for your child to thread as a start, before slowly introducing them to smaller items. You should also opt for stiffer and thicker thread items instead of thinner pieces of string for their first few attempts. 

Items to Thread: 

• Cut-Up Toilet Paper Rolls 
• Cut-Up Paper Egg Cartons 
• Letter Beads
• Cut-Up Straws
• Buttons
• Fruit Loop/Cheerio Cereal
• Pasta 
• Hole-Punched Leaves 

Items to Use as Thread: 

• Pipe-cleaner
• Yarn
• Wooden Sticks 
• Shoe Laces
• Ribbons of Different Widths 
• Feathers

Child-Friendly Scissors

Simple cutting activities with scissors can help strengthen your child's hand muscles that are vital for writing, provided that they are holding the scissors correctly. Inviting them to cut out shapes or lines involve bilateral coordination and visual focus to swerve the scissors in and out of corners. 

When your child is first introduced to scissors, allow them to explore how it works by inviting them to cut up objects of different materials, such as newspaper, coloured paper, cardboard, craft paper, and more. After which, you can offer them printables with dotted lines for them to cut along lines, shapes, or even letters. To spice things up, you can also purchase kids scissors with different edges, such as squiggly lines, or zig-zag lines to pique their interest. 

Remember to get child-friendly scissors that are appropriate for your child's developmental age. If your child is left-handed, choose a left-handed child-friendly scissors for comfort. Adult supervision is also recommended during cutting activities to ensure your child's safety. 

Squizzel Box

For busy working parents that simply do not have the time to purchase loose materials for your child's activities, Squizzel Box is the perfect kit for you! 

Develop focus and good hand-eye coordination while carefully building up your house of bricks piece by piece in the Community Helpers Box, develop a firm grip through creating your DIY tie-dye shirt in the Exploring Patterns Box, stitch together your very own earth bag (Rainforest Adventures box) or weave together your beautiful dreamcatcher in the Magic of Flight box.

Each box is packed with 10 thematic hands-on activities for your child to experiment with. These include science experiments, DIY crafts, and fine motor skill activities! Step-by-step instructions are also provided with each activity.