Fun Pre-Writing Activities

It's been a while since I've posted some activities I do with my 3-year old.  Caden is not really into coloring with crayons like some kids are.  This wouldn't matter too much except that I like him to practice holding a pencil the correct way and build his fingers for future writing.  Thankfully, there are a number of activities that don't involve crayons to achieve this. Thankfully, Caden already has great hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.  There are several other mediums he enjoys such as painting (which he mainly does at preschool) and drawing with sidewalk chalk which strengthen his hands and fingers. He also has always loved molding things with play-doh which is another great pre-writing skill.  A few other things he enjoys doing is playing with his tools and helping Collin build things.  Hammering, screwing in nails, all of those things help strengthen his little hands.

We also practice writing and tracing.  Sometimes he's up for it, other times he'd rather play.  Therefore, I try to think of ways to include play in some of our learning activities.

Here are a few activities we've been doing lately.  The first activity involves a colander and pipe cleaners.  I had him put the pipe cleaners in different holes of the colander.  He did great and sort of liked this activity especially after he decided he could make a hat with it.  We've done this several days this week.  I wish I would have thought of this a year ago because I think very young children would enjoy this as well.

The next activity is beading.  I had him sort the beads by color and place them on the pipe cleaners.  These are just the regular Melissa and Doug beads.I've been very impressed with how well he is able to bead things.  This is something we just started doing and he seemed to naturally know what to do.  I literally just bought these this week.  I have been wanting to buy beads for him but didn't want to spend any money...thankfully these were worth it.  I should have bought these sooner.

I bought this awesome Turtle when he was almost 2 to take with us to church and work on his fine motor skills.  He still likes playing with it from time to time.  He mastered matching the magnetic bead in the correct color slot when he was about 2.5.  Now he will go back and forth between putting them all in the matching slot and trying to get all the beads in one slot.  This is called the Educo Colorback Sea Turtle Bead Maze.  You can buy it on Amazon.  It's not the cheapest toy but it's held up great.

This last activity he does on his own any time he sees a flash light or remote control.  He's taking a part a small flash light.  He loves taking apart things and trying to put them back together.  This is also a fun fine motor, pre-writing activity.