How to Teach Your Toddler / Kids to Write - Best Tips that Works Like Wonder

When Can Your Toddler Start Learning to Write?

Kids Start their writing actions by scribbling. A child usually starts to understand the difference between drawing and writing by the age of three. However, it will take a good amount of time for your kids to start understanding what are they writing. Teaching how to write requires a lot of patience on the part of the parents. Writing gets a boost once the kid starts talking and understanding the sounds and meaning of all the letters.

 Before your toddler starts formal schooling, you can give them a head start by teaching certain elementary basics about writing. Here are some easy tips to get started with writing:

1. Strengthen their palms :

Even before your toddler takes their first step towards writing it is important to strengthen their palm and muscles. Just like any part of the body, kids need to build up muscle and dexterity in their hands before they learn to write. Take some time to help your child build muscles, then move on to gripping a crayon or a marker. Allow them to scribble. 

 Work on fun letter games to get your child interested, and then work with markers and paper.

1. Encourage them to play with Play-doh:

Playing with things such as clay or Play-Doh and holding different things with their hands will strengthen the hand muscles. Let them have fun playing around with the dough and let them create what they want with the dough.

2. Allow them to color:

Younger kids' crayons are usually designed smaller and wider so as to make gripping easier for the toddler. Give your toddler crayons specifically made for younger kids, and let them have fun coloring. This activity will also help your toddler practice gripping.

3. Play Finger games with them:

Sit with your child, and make some finger gestures for eg: point out 1, 2, 3 using your finger, make a finer gesture showing beautiful, ok, etc., and encourage your kid to follow you. These actions will help strengthen their palm as well as help to develop their motor skills.
 4. Water the plants:
 Give your child a spray bottle to water the household plants. Ask the child to go around the house and give each plant some water. The action of squeezing the bottle builds up muscles in the hand.
5. Storytelling with finger puppets:

Give your kids finger puppets and encourage them to tell a story about them. Have them act it out with the puppets on their hands. Demonstrate it first to your kids. Moving the puppets increases dexterity and coming up with a story encourages their imagination

Allow them to scribble:

Kids take their first step towards writing by scribbling, it may be annoying for parents to see their kid scribbling, yet do not stop your kids from scribbling. Allow them to start scribbling in your inspection to avoid the mess as soon as they start holding items. Seeing things appear on paper out of their hands will excite and encourage the child to scribble more and kids seem to enjoy it a lot. You can guide them on how to write their name, one letter at a time.

Learning Proper Grip and Posture

1. Introduce Tripod Grip : 

Guide your kid on how to hold a Pencil or crayon properly. Introduce a tripod grip to them. A tripod grip relies on the pointer finger, thumb, and middle finger to support the pencil equally. You can give them a 'Two Finger Silicon pencil grip' to make it easy for them. 
Use pencils and crayons while introducing them to the tripod grip method, Avoid using any kind of pen, as the nip of the pen is designed to be smoother, which makes it harder to grip the pen properly. 

 

2. Teach them not to grip it too tightly:
 Many kids hold the pencil too tight to make a comfortable grip, which can hurt your kid's hand over time. Signs of this problem include white knuckles. To help a kid loosen his or her grip, place a small lump of something, such as Play-Doh, in the palm of his or her hand while he or she writes. Or again you can use Two Finger Silicon pencil grip.

3. Work on pressure:

 Some kids write too dark or too Light, this happens due to the amount of pressure applied. Some kids write so dark that  the pencil lid is broken or the paper gets ripped , while on the other hand, some kids write it so light that it becomes difficult to read. Help your kid to understand how much pressure is needed. Too much can break crayons and pencils but too little means you won't be able to read what your kid wrote.

Make it fun :

Do not try to teach your kids how to write just because it’s necessary, no kid will start writing unless it is fun for them. They will start writing letters properly with a pencil or a crayon only when the colors and patterns amuse them. Start by showing them how to make random signs by using slate and crayons or magnetic doodle pads. 

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 An exciting way to get a toddler interested in writing letters properly is by using sand, salt, or wheat flour to draw random signs and letters and encourage them to follow.

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Spell out letters using  Play-Doh with your child. Roll outlines to make letters with them. Try to begin with their name. Children tend to learn letters from their names very easily, also this way it is more fun for them to learn the alphabet. 

3. Use finger paints:

 All the kids love to make messes all the time, take it as an opportunity to teach them letters. Seeing such type of mess may be quite annoying for the parents, yet it's a great way to keep your kid busy with learning. Ask your child to dip his/her finger in the colored paints and encourage them to spell out letters. This will even help strengthen their palm muscles and keep them engaged in learning.  

To keep this less messy, try putting paint in a gallon zip-top bag and sealing it well. Be sure to squeeze out air as much air as possible. Now your kid can trace letters on the outside of the bag.

4. Encourage your child to play with letters. Give your kids letter blocks, magnet letters, or toys with letters painted on them, as all of them encourage letter recognition in your child. Make sure your kid is surrounded by letters most of the time.  Toys such as letter blocks also help build dexterity and muscles.

5. Ask your kids to identify letters when you're out of your place. Kids are quite fresh when they are out you can use this time as well to teach them. Help them to see what letters make what sounds by saying the word out loud.

Getting Started with Writing 

1. Make your child write on top of Bold Alphabets(letters) :

Draw the alphabet in bold letters on a piece of paper or a slate and ask your kid to write on it. Start with tracing a letter to make it much easier for a child to learn the contours and curves of an alphabet. For instance, when writing an "A," you can tell your child, "First you make a slanting line upward. Then, you start from the top of that line and make a slanting line downward. Next, you go to the middle of your first line and draw a small line over to the other side. Once they familiarize themselves with the letters, make them write without the pre-written letters.

2. Encourage your kids to connect the dots:

 Write down some alphabets in light lines or dots and ask the kid to connect them. Show the kid how to go over the letters with the pencil. Guide their hand the first time they perform this task. You can also use worksheets. Use only a pencil for this exercise. Once they are familiar with the individual letters then write down their name in a dot and ask them to connect them.

3. Try giving the letters a fun story:

 For instance, A" could be a house with two levels. Making it more fun will help your kid remember the letters and keep them interested.

4 .Try to Surround your Kids With Letters most of the time:  

Try to keep the alphabet around whenever your child is trying to write, making sure that the kid has a visual reminder of the alphabet in upper- and lowercase letters.

5. Try using letter-tracing worksheets as much as possible:

 These worksheets will help your kid work on letters effectively as each of the worksheets focuses on one letter individually. It will show your kids how to write them, and it will include areas where they will trace over the letter and areas where they must write the letter themselves.

6. Help kids out by describing movements. When a child is having trouble making a letter, write the letter yourself on a sheet and explain to your child about it.

Moving Up to Words and Sentences:

1. Teach your kids the sounds of the letters. That is, focus on certain letters, and teach them the sound that coordinates with them. For instance, you can say, " 'T' makes a 'tuh' sound. Can you hear it in words like 'tuh-able,' 'tuh-op,' and 'tuh-rycycle?"
This way your kid will learn to write and read the words by themself.

2. Very importantly work on spelling with the kids. Try Giving your kids a good foundation by helping them spell the words they commonly tend to use correctly.
Ask your kid to sound out a word and write try writing down the spellings by coordinating with the sounds of letters. Start with the words that contain the letters that they are already familiar with, this will help them to develop faster. Help them learn the correct spelling by having them re-write a word after they've spelled it out themselves.

3. Encourage them to solve Worksheets :

 Encourage them to solve worksheets that encourage your kids to write. For instance, some worksheets encourage kids to write what's going on in a picture.

4. Make writing a daily practice. Parents should sit and write something (Daily Dairy for instance ) to encourage their child to write every day. Let them use their imagination to make stories that go along with their pictures. As your kid continues to connect meaning with letters and words, his or her spelling will improve. One way to encourage daily writing is to have your kid start a journal. You can ask your kid to write about what happened that day, or you can use prompts to help her along. As an example, you could ask her to write about one of her toys and why she likes it or to discuss a dream she had the night before.
One of the best ways to encourage your kids to write daily is to write yourself first. Seeing adults write is a great way to show children where writing fits into daily life and it offers a chance to explain why we write and in what context. Help your child see how necessary writing is and how enjoyable it can be to write. Show them how often you write during your day for all kinds of reasons;  Children can then get involved in practical writing activities at home, such as contributing to the family calendar, diary, noticeboard, or messages on the fridge.