When did your child become interested in those wipeable books?

[bananainpjs]

Hello,

My child is 3.4 years old. I’ve tried getting him to do those wipeable books for education for numbers, pen control, letter etc. but he just gets frustrated he can’t hold his pen properly.

I have then bought him those pencil grip things to help him hold his pen. He likes them but now just proceeds to draw squiggly lines and not follow the instructions (me telling him what they want him to do) on the book.

Am I expecting too much from him? The books are aimed for 3-5 year olds.

I would say yes. My son is 3y3m and I would say he has pretty good pen control. He can draw a circle and zig zags and straight lines. He's getting quite good at colouring things in (obviously not all in the lines yet). He recognises all the numbers but I'm definitely not going to get him to start writing them yet. He's been using crayons and pens since he turned 1.

Your son is 3 years old. Let him play. Make using a pen fun - my son is obsessed with vehicles so I draw them (e.g. a car) and let him colour it in. Or draw the body and let him draw the wheels.

Never. He hates anything to do with writing, drawing, colouring, painting, scissors. Still does as a near teen.
Let him explore if he wants, and if he doesn't, see if there is anything else that will develop his hand muscles (lego, making biscuits, threading.....) that might be preferable.

My youngest liked them when she was 2.5 but only because she was watching her big sister doing school work in lockdown and wanted her own 'work' to do to feel involved. I would encourage the mark naming he enjoys, if he doesn't like the books colouring, dot to dot, drawing or painting on plain paper to do his own pictures and ''writing'' which might just be doing random pages of zig zags for a long time yet, if it's a chore he will end up just hating it,

@MaizeAmaze

Never. He hates anything to do with writing, drawing, colouring, painting, scissors. Still does as a near teen. Let him explore if he wants, and if he doesn't, see if there is anything else that will develop his hand muscles (lego, making biscuits, threading.....) that might be preferable.

This

DD on the other hand would colour in abs scribble on anything she could get her hands on at 2.

Never. It took my DD a long time to choose to colour, draw and write.

At that age I would be working on his fine motor skills to develop the muscles in his hands, ready for using pencils when he starts school. Things like play dough, threading things, cutting things, using tweezers to pick up small objects, using pipettes to play with coloured liquids. Also having lots of different mark making resources available - pens, paints, crayons, chalk etc. An example activity that is going down well with the child I'm looking after at the moment is that I chalk zig zags and wavy lines on the driveway and he paints over them with a chunky paint brush and water.
A very useful book (which is usually free on kindle unlimited if you sign up for a free trial) is Squiggle, Fiddle, Splat by Martin Williams(??) - it's got loads of ideas for fine motor skills and early writing skills.

DS kind of got into them at around 4, but only one particular book because he likes the animal illustrations, I think there generally just not that fun for any child to be enthusiastic about.

For now I'd probably just do colouring or craft type activities to work on his hand control, then maybe come back to letters when got better pen control, so he gets the confidence boost from easily succeeding. If you push it to early he might just get frustrated and put off.