Development, Eye Hand Coordination, Fine Motor Skills, Functional Skills, Handwriting, Letter Formation, Occupational Therapy Activities

Cursive Activity Beads

Colleen Beck OTR/L

Colleen Beck, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner and author of The OT Toolbox website. She manages all of The OT Toolbox social media accounts and runs the popular newsletter. Colleen created The OT Toolbox in 2011 and since then has written thousands of blog posts designed to support therapy providers, educators, parents, counselors, admin, and caregivers in promoting the healthy development of kids. Check out Colleen's blog posts below:

by Colleen Beck OTR/L
October 29, 2017

Coming up with creative activities that can help kids learn to identify and write cursive letters can be fun. This cursive activity uses beads as a tool for forming letters, copying cursive letters, and learning to identify cursive letters. The best thing about these cursive activity beads is that they can be used in a variety of ways to help kids learn and carryover cursive writing skills.

You can read more about cursive letter families below as well as more cursive writing strategies and tools here and in the How to Teach Cursive Writing series that we have on The OT Toolbox this month.

You can find all of the tips and strategies for teaching cursive handwriting under the cursive writing tab up above.

Cursive Activity Beads

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You’ll need just a few materials to make your own set of cursive activity beads:

Wooded Beads (Ours came from www.craftprojectideas.com)

Permanent Marker

It’s very easy to create these beads for using in cursive writing activities. Simply use the permanent marker and write letters on the sides of the beads. The flat side of the wooden beads makes it easy to write a small cursive letter. The surface “holds” the permanent marker’s ink nicely so it doesn’t smear.

We wrote the cursive letters on the beads according to cursive families. This way, cursive letters of the same cursive letter family were on the same bead. It’s a fun way to help kids learn parts of cursive letters and cursive letter families…to in the end help with carryover of cursive skills.