Improving writing skills in the Early Years

When thinking about strategies for helping our youngest children to improve their writing skills and eventually become successful writers, you may be surprised to learn that this does not start with the use of a pencil! Before the age of 5 yrs (and often later) the bones in a child’s hands are still developing and are not fully formed. This means that producing letters on paper can be challenging, and often detrimental to their overall physical development. Before focusing on the smaller movements such as pencil grip and fine motor control, children need lots of opportunities to build on their gross motor skills – working on their chest, shoulder and arm muscles as well as developing motor muscle planning in order to appropriately sequence body movements for a controlled and desired outcome.

It's not just their larger muscle development which forms part of the pre-requisites needed for successful writing later on – the act of writing and mark making itself needs to be purposeful, engaging and most importantly…fun! I could spend hours writing about the benefits of play-based learning, tailored to children’s interests, but essentially this is the long and short of it: If you want a child to be engaged with their learning, the learning needs to appeal to them and must be fun. If something is ‘fun’, we enjoy doing it, and when we enjoy doing something, we process it, retain and remember it much more effectively…we become more successful, because we enjoy it.

So…

What strategies could we use to improve writing skills in young children?

Start with gross motor movements:

Build up those BIG muscles first by utilising the outdoors, or large spaces in the hall. Activities such as climbing on a climbing frame, pulling up on ropes, swinging on monkey bars, pushing a friend on a swing and even helping to carry equipment to set up your outdoor area will all work on the chest and arm muscles. Incorporate some fun activities outside such as painting walls with water and paintbrushes, making shapes in the air with ribbons on a stick, wafting a large parachute up and down and using hoops to make giant bubbles! The DK learning Look I’m a scientist book includes instructions for making BIG bubbles outside, and can be used alongside your usual play equipment to find fun and exciting experiments to engage children. Our previous activity of using coffee bean grinder for sensory play helps with their proprioceptive input by adding a little resistance when using the muscles and the joints in the arm and shoulders and also develops motor muscle planning by having to appropriately sequence and time body movements to reach a desired outcome with refined control. Using the grinder also requires a degree of postural control when co-ordinating the arms to make the rotation movements! .... all that physical development from a little bit of fun huh?

This post also includes a recipe and instructions for making playdough, which brings me onto my next strategy…

 

Use playdough as a tool to develop both gross and fine motor skills

Playdough is a wonderful learning aid, and the more of it you have, the better! Giving children large quantities of dough to handle means that they get to really feel the weight of the product and benefit from challenges such as being asked to lift it high into the air, lift with both hands, then just one hand…can they lift the dough using the back of their hand as well as the palm of their hand? Can they squish the dough flat between their hands? How much can they fit into their first and squeeze as hard as they can? - all of these movements will be strengthening their arm and also hand muscles which they will need for becoming successful writers later on.

Of course, playdough also lends itself really well to fine motor skill activities too – asking children to poke and pinch the dough using their fingers, as well as practising control in rolling the dough into smaller shapes, or using scissors to snip the dough into tiny pieces before picking them all back up and squishing them together again!

Using this Look I’m an engineer book is a great place to find other exciting fine motor skills activities such as manipulating pipe-cleaners to make parachute people, or making spinning pictures which help to massage and utilise the muscles in the hands.

These are the first steps of working on the physical development needed to eventually be able to hold and control a pencil for writing.

 

Use exciting tuff tray activities to introduce a topic

Literacy within the early years does not just involve mark-making, although having a range of tools available for children to explore making marks on paper or other surfaces is a really good way of encouraging early writing in a fun, child-led way. Having different mark making materials available at all times means that children may choose to write or make marks for a purpose after exploring an activity they have found particularly engaging!
Early literacy also involves speaking, listening, understanding, physical development, talking about and using the senses, hearing and distinguishing different sounds, all of these areas need developing in order to become a successful writer. Setting up a play tray, such as this honey bee tuff tray activity which includes fact books about bees as well as a range of multi-sensory items allows children to build upon these skills and areas of development at their own level – it’s always a good idea to include non-fiction books alongside sensory play items in order to help extend the learning. This Bee Book lends itself well to this type of activity.

 

Creating a WOW around a topic to stimulate learning

Using awareness days such as World Oceans Day within learning to stimulate mark making can enable and engage pupils in a much more meaningful way. Undertaking a fish investigation activity - encourage children to record their exciting experiences, using sea life books with annotated fish diagrams to scaffold and model their own outcomes.
Make phonics fun

Understanding how words are made, by being able to distinguish between different sounds, initial sounds and eventually ‘sounding out’ and also ‘blending’ sounds together to segment and form words is absolutely key to improving witing skills in young children. It is really important for children to learn HOW to make sounds and words before even attempting to write them down… but it needs to be fun and engaging! This Mrs Wordsmith Phonics card game can be used as a fun activity to consolidate phonics learning.

Finally…once the gross motor skills, physical development, sensory development, language and early mark making has been given lots of time and attention – you can move onto…

 

Fine motor skills activities

Of course, this also needs to be fun and engaging, and what better way to encourage that pincer grip and handling of small materials than Lego and DK learning has a wonderful book called 365 things to do with Lego to help with this.

You can also download our lavender fine motor skills flashcards to help with this too!