Writing practice for 5 year old

[pepinanalilyplant]

Hello,

My 5 year old is quite lazy with her writing and her teacher has asked us to encourage her to improve her fine motor skills at home.

She loves craft stickers cutting and painting.. but just generally disinterested in any pencil holding activity. She's good with her maths and reading.

Any activities or books anyone's tried to get DC interested in writing.

Thanks

Keep encouraging her with her arts and crafts. Maybe get her some new special pens/pencils.

I would work on ‘funky finger’ activities. If you take a look on Pinterest you will get loads of ideas.

We bought some books from The Works and they are wipeable and come with a dry wipe pen. There are lots of different ones; some have numbers and others are letters and words. They are brilliant and the little ones can trace around the letters and numbers with the pen so it helps with pen control. Hope this helps 😊

She’s 5 I would say leave her be

www.theworks.co.uk/p/pre-school-learning-books/wipe-clean-pen-control/9780709727057.html

A link to one of them 😊

Tracing over simple pictures
Draw shapes wiggly lines and get her to cut them out on the lines
Play doh
Slotting beads and buttons on string
Using tweezers to move small objects from a to b
All these things help strengthen their muscles in their hands

Thank you for suggestions. We have an assortment of wipe clean books that she completely ignores. @OnceuponaRainbow18 I'm more than happy to let her be.. she in only 5 but she gets loads of writing homework and on two occasions her teacher has asked us to encourage her with writing 🤷‍♀️!

@pepinanalilyplant

I’d push back at school and remind them she’s only 5, school should be fun and not pressurised!

Can’t imagine my 5 year olds school asking us to do writing at home!

Playdough
Threading beads (or pasta on string)
Use tongs to pick things up
Lego
Pegging things

Avoid wipe clean books - the pressure you need to use for the pen is not particularly great for building fine motor skills and pencil control.

School have said to work on her fine motor skills not to do handwriting practice. The purpose will be to improve her hand muscle strength and precision which will in turn improve her handwriting.

Does she like Lego? Building toys? Bead things? A quick Google will give loads of suggestions.

The one thing I would steer we'll clear of is any "handwriting practice" that isn't totally driven by her

Thank you everyone. @Fallagain great ideas on Pinterest for finger gym that we will try.
@OnceuponaRainbow18 agree that school should be fine at that age. I started school age 6 (outside uk) and had homework only at age 8. However I feel, we need to support her and what her teacher has advised and not make her fall behind her peers.

*fun not fine.

Handwriting is obsolete. There are computer games out there that will help improve her typing skills.

What a strange response to say handwriting is obselete. What do you think children do at school? No handwriting?
This is about developing better fine motor control for a young child and there have been some great suggestions.

My DS is in year one and has recently gone to a party where in the party bag he received a packet of post it notes and his own pen. Without any prompting from us he’s taken to writing and leaving notes around the house. Most of them involve poo. But brilliant writing practice! Maybe you could do something similar and start writing and hiding funny notes to each other?

My five year old writes the shopping list for us when we got to the corner shop. Is very good at spelling 'sweets'

Threading Cheerios on spaghetti is a good and cheap one.

Maybe a necklace with beads set for Christmas

Something like a glow pad can be good.
We have huge static white board sheets that you can stick on any flat surface which my kids enjoy.
Letting them write with colour or smelly gel pens.

Black paper and metallic pens were a hit here

Get some fine sand or dye some salt and put it in a tray, let her practice forming letters with her fingers. Let her "write" with chalk outside, also, you can draw patterns with chalk outside (like zigzags, waves, spirals) and get her to paint over them with a paintbrush and water. There is a great book called "squiggle, fiddle, splat" by Martin Williams which has some great ideas on encouraging fine motor skills and early writing in reluctant early years children.

I think there's two separate issues: fine motor skills so holding a pen is easier and actually seeing the point of writing as an activity.

Fine motor skills: Lego, beads, funny man game etc, all the things suggested above.

Seeing the point: invisible ink pens with UV lights that reveal secret messages, shopping lists, letters from /to grandparents, whiteboard in your kitchen or somewhere for shopping lists and reminders (you can start by doing funny ones).

Main thing is to keep it fun and not obviously educational at home. Pretend she's funding out the value for herself!

Could you get her chalk and a small blackboard. They're a pound in The Range. A little bit different than holding a pen/ marker but works the same way in building strength in little fingers.
A large scrapbook (A3) would do the trick if you can't get a blackboard