Helping Preschooler Learn to Write Letters

Honestly, don't stress. If you have an ipad, there are free apps to do this stuff, and it's like a game. There are also some dry erase marker books for kids where they can write and erase. That might be fun for him.

They are learning this stuff in kindergarten, so if he doesn't get it now, he will.

It takes fine motor control, and I think there are things he can do to play that will strengthen that (playdoh, etc.).

First give him time. As he gets through the year, he will be more comfortable and confident. I had the same issue with my now kindergartner. She went to 3 yr pre with the park district and when she went to 4 yr, it was as if she never learned her letters. But by the end of the year, she was much better and doing well now. One suggestion the pre teacher had was making it fun. Write letters in dirt, pudding, cream, paint. He has permission to make a mess! My brother gave us a Leap Frog desk thing and my dd was just not into it and never used it. She did enjoy a "laptop" that helped her recognize letters but really enjoyed it when we went for walks looking for things shaped like letters or writing with chalk outside.

Please, just stop. He's just barely 4. There is a huge range of "normal" at this age. Some kids can write at this age, and some can't. It's no big deal either way.

And if he's not ready for K next year, he's not ready and will stay out a year longer and be ready when he does go in.

Pre-school should be fun over and above anything else. Let him do what he can do, at his own level, on his own time line, without pressure or judgement. His hand strength and hand-to-eye coordination will eventually, naturally get to a level where this isn't a struggle. He has more than enough time to master this. Pleases, stop belaboring this at home and make sure that the teachers aren't pressuring him at pre-school either. He'll get it when he's ready to.

Honestly, I would not spend time worrying about this. At this age it is not important if they write their letters. Try again when he is 5 and 6. Our son was not interested in writing letters in preschool either but we could tell he was incredibly smart. By first grade he was put in the gifted program. By 2nd grade he was reading at a 6th grade level. By 3rd grade his handwriting finally started getting decent. He's a lefty and was not so into writing....but that year he really got into keeping a journal and writing his own creative stories. Anyway - I just say all this to keep the big picture in mind. Kindergarten where we live is the grade where kids work on learning letters and learning how to write them. Because your son has an August birthday he will probably be a bit behind in some areas in Kindergarten simply because he is younger than some of the other kids but he will catch up.

If he is pushing back and you can tell he's not enjoying it, I really think it's not worth doing it right now. He's not ready. I DO think it's important to have him learn to write his own name, but the rest really doesn't matter right now.

Knowing how to write their letters is usually NOT a criteria for determining kindergarten readiness. Knowing how to write their name is. Children are taught to write their letters in kindergarten. My son's kinder class last year focused on one letter each week. It is more important (but not necessary) to recognize the letters than to write them.

Focus instead on just improving his fine motor skills. Buy him a book of simple mazes. Have him color and draw. Tell him to write his name on each maze/picture so he gets practice doing that. Ask him about what he drew and if he would like to try to write a title on the picture. Don't force it though. You can also get a book of simple cutting projects. My son loved those when he was 4 and it really improved his cutting skills - the more fine motor skills you build the better he will be at writing when the time comes.

Check with your school division to find out what they expect for kindergarten readiness. In our division kids were only expected to identify the letters of the alphabet and print their own names. They did not need to be able to print the entire alphabet. They learned that in kindergarten. We had a Leap Pad Activity Desk with a program for learning to print letters but the kids hardly used it. (I imagine that was the old version of the Scribble.)

It's only October. I wouldn't be stressing about where he might be in another 10-11 months... Don't push him into hating "school" before he's even started. It doesn't matter what the other kids can do, he'll learn it in his own time.

There are a lot of other kids in the class that didn't go to 3 year old pre-school too. I'd suggest letting the teachers teach him. It's what they learn in pre-school. He's normal. The other kids are just a bit ahead. By the end of the year they'll all be the same.

He is probably tired of school by the time he comes home so don't stress out over this so much. It's not like he's going to flunk pre-K. There are kids that enter kindergarten who can't read, write anything, and haven't had pre-K or a 3 year old pre-school.

He may also show more interest in this after Christmas. I'd really just let it go and stop stressing over this.

playdough really helps with those muscles and taking the lids on and off empty jars like vanilla extract bottles. you can get an empty salt and pepper shaker and have him poke toothpicks or something small into the holes, give him pipecleaners and beads andhe can thread them in a patter,
my dd LOVEs to wipe shaving cream on the bathtub walls and use her finger to practice her spelling words, they make bathtub crayons too that are super fun.

talk to the teacher for more fun ideas but practice practice practice is all. and teach him in lowercase instead of all caps.

Have him color, that will help him with his coordination. My daughter really didn't care to color and her handwriting progress was pretty slow.

Now she writes extremely sloppy, except when you ask her to clean it up, then it is really neat. She really wants to get on the HW wall of fame, so she has been making everything perfect.

I would not worry about it. He is still really young and will catch on when he is ready. It is just like walking. Some children walk at 6 months, others after a year old, nut they do eventually walk.

I would suggest you first work on building up his fine motor skills. Since boys seem to mostly be active and use their gross motor skills, running, jumping climbing. that is their strength at this age.

Since you live where there are going to be times he is inside for longer periods of time, be prepared to work on some therapies to build up the fine motor skills.

You will need some small cars, like hot wheels cars.
Colors or markers large roll of plain paper, even cheap gift wrap with a solid color on the back will work. and playdo. Do NOT call it therapy, just treat it as play time.

While sitting at a table, have him roll out as many balls of clay as possible. Marble size is the goal. Show him how to roll them with only his thumb and pointer finger. use each hand.

Have him line them up. in a straight line. Then using only his pointer finger have him mash each one.

Have him roll little balls again, and line them up again. This time only have him use is thumb to mash them..

If he is up to it roll out the balls line them up and this time, you tell him you are going to call out Finger! Thumb.. and he needs to flatten the balls using the digits you have called out. ""finger, Thumb, finger, finger, thumb, finger, thumb, thumb, thumb.. You get the idea.

Roll out the sheet of gift wrap paper and have him draw a long line in Blue (you decide colors) them have him draw a big circle in red..

These shapes can cross over each other. Do at least 3 different colors in 3 different shapes. Make long lines and big shapes.

Then have him take a small toy car and "drive the car" only using his pointer finger down the blue line. Then the red, then the third line. You can then have him use his thumb. .

All of this will strengthen his digits and his hand. He will need these skills and the strength to have better control when writing. Also his visual attention will also become stronger.

Scissors, gluing with glue sticks, all will help build up these muscles.

Tracing paper on top of letters can help.

You could probably download some tracing sheets with letters, I used to purchase work books at book stores or at the teacher supply store.

get out lots of different colors of highlighters
now, say his name is Mike. First you teach him to write it just like that, a capital first letter, and lower case for the rest.
Now write out his name with pencil. Using pencil again, add dots for where you would start and stop a line, so for the M, you would have a dot at the bottom left, top left, bottom middle, top right, bottom right. for the i you would do a dot at the bottom, a dot at the top of the line and then a dot, for the well, dot. For the e, or any letters with curves do multiple dots along the curve so that if you did a dot to dot you would create that curve.
And that is the point, the kid will do a dot to dot. So now number the dots in each letter, the M would have 5 numbers the i would have 2 in the line and then a number for the dot because you lift your pencil. If you pick up your pencil in writing the letter then change color before you write the next number. So the M would have all red dots, the i line would have orange dots/numbers for the line part and a yellow dot/number for dot part. The k would have numbers 1 and 2 in the vertical line in green, and blue numbers/dots 1 and 2 in the < part.
Does that make sense?
Now he can go from dot to dot knowing that if the color changes then he picks up his pencil before going to the next set of dots. After he understands how to do that then you eliminate the pencil lines so it's just the colored numbers and dots. After he gets that then you can just go to only dots with no numbers.
Hope that makes sense!

I didn't read the other responses, but what worked well for my daughter and what they do in her preschool classes (both 3 and 4) is use dots. Make the letters using dots and have your son connect the dots. They also have their name spelled regularly and have the kids trace over top. Both work well and my daughter can now write her name without any help. However, even at 4 1/2 and in her 4th year of preschool/mother's day out, she still doesn't know all her letters and certainly can't write them all.

My 4 year old, who also has a late August birthday, does go to preschool and has since last November, but she honestly learned to write letters more from the ipad. She loves the tracing game. If you have an ipad, have him try some apps. But for what it's worth, my older son has the same late August birthday (he's 9 now) as my daughter and we decided he wasn't ready for kindergarten when he was 4 turning 5. We kept him in preschool one more year, and it was the best decision we could have made for him. Just a thought. Good luck!

Don't worry about pushing him. Kids are sponges at this age and it probably won't take long for him to learn. Do it in a playful way, not worksheets. Fill a ziploc bag with hair gel or finger paint (double bag it) and let him draw with his finger. If he wants to do letters encourage him, but don't force him. Do the same thing with a cake pan filled with sand or rice, finger paint on paper, dry erase markers on a mirror or window, make rainbows by tracing over letters with different colored markers, write on fogged up mirrors. There are some good iPad apps for tracing letters that my son has liked. Don't make it a chore or he is going to resist and learn to hate it. He has plenty of time to learn and kindergarten teachers will spend all year working on writing letters.

Sounds like dysgraphia. Be slow and kind it is very frustrating to him. Get him in early intervention at the school and OT right now while they can help him early! Feel free to message me with any other info. Best to you son!
J.

For some kids, learning to write is a matter of just copying the letter. With other kids its incremental - they have to develop the fine motor skills, recognize the letter symbol and know which lines you write verticle and which ones go horizontal.

Get a dot to dot book. If he doesn't know his number order yet, just point to the next dot he has to connect to. That will get his fine motor skills going.

Once he recognizes the letters, have him write with different material with his hands or fingers - pudding in a cookie sheet, sand in a dish, whip cream on a cutting board, shaving cream in the shower, finger paint, paint brush and a can of water, a stick in the dirt, side walk chalk on the driveway, washable marker on a mirror or picture frame.

I used to blow up balloons and write letters and numbers on them, and he would have to go find the letter I would call out, and then he would have to write it. We would take turns doing that.

Have him sound out the letters as he's writing them.

Don't forget his numbers too!

I've heard of writing letters in sand, shaving cream, even pudding :) to make it more fun and more tactile. When I did some Montessori training, they encouraged this very physical work before using a pencil. But don't worry--just like nobody goes to kindergarten wearing a diaper, he will probably get the hang of this well before next year. Good luck!

Hi Tia,

When my daughter was your son's age I bought her the leapfrog "stuff" and quite honestly... it aggrivated her because the program was a little unforgiving of mistakes. By the way, if he senses pressure to learn it to write, he may really loose interest.

I think that it's awesome that you want to work with him and when you do, I highly recommend:
Meade "letter stories" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002R5ARMW/ref=s9_wish_g...
Meade "shape builders" http://www.amazon.com/Shape-Builders-Learn-Inches-48040/d...

It's awesome, because as you work with them, there are stories to go with the formation of different letter groups... We do the shape builders first, which teaches pencil control and helps her relax intro the process and not look at this as "school work" and then we do the letter stories. I play some soft mozart in the background (which helps with concentration).

That being said, try no to worry to much about his writing....he's smart and a fast learner....he will get it. It's pre-school. My little girl is in kindergarten and she can read and write, BUT I still have to work with her on letter and number formation.... So this learning process goes on for a while. Also, remember that girls tend to be ahead of boys in the process so try not to compare him to the girls....For now, I'll bet he just wants to run and play....and that probably more important than letters right now. Perhaps, I'd better take my own advice.

Best to you,
Christina

don't start with letters. get some of that paper that has the lines and the dashes in the middle (the kind they practice printing on) and have him do straight up and down lines concentrating on staying in the lines. then do circles and triangles. once he has those mastered start doing letters. they do not have to know there letters to start preschool unless you have him in some gifted program. preschool is pretty much to learn socialization skills, and following directions. I would not buy a program to teach him to write. get him some paper and pencils and let him do circles and shapes and then go from there.

adding this. something else that helps is to give him a maze book (big fat mazes in a coloring book type thing they usually sell them at the dollar stores) and dot to dot books.

small motor skills like writing and coloring are hard for boys. the muscles just do not develop as quickly for boys.

I would not worry. there are programs for the ipad where the kids trace the letters with their fingers that is fun. you can also cover a baking sheet with shaving cream and have him write his name with his finger.

play doh is good for building up muscles.

many kindergardenters struggle with writing. and he will likely be the youngest in his kinder class if you send him next year.