Updated: Feb 7, 2023
This first part of this activity is from the Pre-Writers Club - Unit 3. This unit is themed around The Wheels on the Bus and contains lots of activities to support children with their pencil grip.
What you need:
large cardboard box/roll of paper
wax crayons/felts/crayons
toy vehicles
Flatten the box and lie it on the floor. Draw roads and buildings, then drive some toy cars around the map. We did this activity lying on our stomachs on the floor. Drawing in this position, with your body propped up by your elbows will increase your child's shoulder stability and strengthens their upper body which will help them with writing.
You could also decorate some boxes to create buildings.
Skills:
Pencil Grasp – The photos above show 3 different pencil grips. In the first picture Benji is holding the felt tip with his whole hand and his palm is facing sideways. The movement comes from his shoulder. I handed him his pen so that it pointed in the opposite direction, which meant he turned his hand so that his palm faced down to use the pen. This is the next stage of pencil grip development and the movement is beginning to come from his arm and elbow. In the third photo, you can see that Sophie has developed a tripod grip where the movement comes from her wrist, hand and fingers which helps her to make smaller, more controlled marks.
Top Tip:
Use broken crayons to draw with so that your child grips them using their thumb, index finger and middle finger rather than using a whole-hand grasp. This will help to develop the tripod grip.
Crossing the midline - The midline is an imaginary line that divides the body into the left side and the right side. Being able to cross the midline will enable children to be able to write across the page without having to swap hands. Using a large piece of paper allows your child to make marks across the page, crossing their midline.
What you need:
large cardboard box/roll of paper
wax crayons/felts/crayons
I drew a maze on a piece of cardboard and asked Benji if could use a toy car/motorbike to find his way out of the maze. Then he used a felt tip pen to see if he could follow the path using straight lines.
As he was drawing, I noticed that he was holding the felt tip pen using all of his fingers. When he used one of his toys to drive around the maze he tucked his little finger and the one next to it in so it touched his palm. As he was drawing I reminded him to tuck his fingers in. You can also place a pompom in their hand and ask them to hold onto it using their little finger and the one next to it as they write.
The felt tip pens that we used are great for developing the tripod grip because they are moulded and show your child where to position their fingers. I have linked the ones we used below.
I also created a simpler maze and set the challenge to stay inside the lines. I encouraged Benji to race around the corners like a race car driver. This is a great way to get them to form the curve at the bottom of the letters and stops them from writing a capital l as shown in the word follow in the picture below.
He loved this activity and wanted to have a go at creating his own maze.
I always find children are more willing to write when there is a purpose so I asked him to label the start and finish and to add instructions. This gave me a good opportunity to have a look at which letters he is forming correctly/incorrectly. I'm a firm believer that we can hear 100 positive things and 1 negative thing, and then it's the negative one that gets stuck in our head. So I didn't point out any errors as we were playing, I just made a mental note of the ones we need to work on.
He wrote "follow the path and then you will get to the end".
Things he's doing well:
finger spaces between words
phonetically plausible attempts at spelling e.g. foloa for follow
tricky words spelt correctly e.g. the, you
i - uses a dot at the top. (Sometimes children will draw a circle or a large ball)
Things to work on:
l - sometimes written as a capital
t - formation is quite good but there is inconsistency in shape and size. It should be taller than the o in the word to.
y - he formed the letter well but the tail (descender) should be lower that the other letters. Writing on a line would support him with this.
He loved this activity and was so proud of his maze, that he asked if he could keep them to drive his cars around on them.
If you have a go at any of these activities and share any photos on social media I would love to see them. Please tag @miniwritersclub and let me know how you get on.
Anna
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