Play to Develop Pre-writing Skills

Yesterday I posted about some super messy ways to have some outdoor fun – today, I have a less messy outdoor activity that is just as fun!

Simply provide a clothesline hung to their height, a bucket of water, clothes pins, and some rags or baby clothes. They will have a ball soaking them, wringing them out, and hanging them on the line. Then they will keep it going by taking them down and starting all over again!

This activity is super fun and in that aspect alone, it is valuable. Full stop. There are other reasons it has value as well though. We all want our kiddos to develop the muscles necessary to write, right? Well, this activity definitely works the hand muscles and is a wonderful pre-writing exercise! Opening a clothespin is hard work, and while it may look like they are simply playing, the truth is, when young preschoolers are playing, they are building the very important precursors to handwriting.

The skills needed for managing a pencil, copying letter forms, and managing pencil control when copying lists and paragraphs into a space on a page are initiated in the early childhood years. Often, when you see an older kiddo struggling with their handwriting they are likely missing some underlying skills that build the very foundation of writing.

Pre-writing skills include sensory motor, fine motor, and visual-motor. This activity works all of these motor areas in several ways. Sensory motor pre-writing skills used in this play include motor planning, core control, and bilateral hand and arm use. There are many fine motor pre-writing skills exercised here such as pinch precision/tip to tip grasp, finger opposition, finger isolation, hand strength/endurance, grasp strength, and thumb dexterity. The visual motor pre-writing skills being developed here include spatial relations and eye hand coordination.

There is also a sensory component to this type of play invitation (and if you don’t know why that matters you can find out on the Sensory Play episode of the podcast!) Your kiddo is having fun and enjoying themselves, but this contributes to their development in ways you may not know off hand, but are so powerful.

Play truly is a superpower, y’all. Until next time, exercise the superpower you have and play!