Grab a box of alphabet noodles for a fun multisensory learning activity that builds skills in many areas. We used letters pasta to create a sensory bin that incorporates fine motor skills and a letter learning activity.
Alphabet Noodles
You might remember eating alphabet noodles as a child in soup. But if you have a box of letter noodles on hand, it’s easy to create a sensory play activity that builds skills.
This easy dyed pasta activity combines learning with fine motor development. From the scooping to the neat pincer grasp activity, this is a great way to build many skills! Younger children can use scoops and spoons to develop coordination needed to scoop and pour while gaining exposure to letters. What a fun way to build so many areas!
Alphabet Pasta Activities
So, in addition to the ideas we shared above, we love using dry alphabet pasta in other activities to support fine motor and visual motor skills. I love that you can incorporate the tactile sensory play in learning and skill development.
Some of my favorite ideas for alphabet pasta:
Alphabet Sensory Bin Search: Fill a sensory bin with dry alphabet pasta and small items like pom-poms, beads, or toy animals. Hide letter cards or small objects in the bin, and encourage kids to search for specific letters or objects. This activity helps improve pincer grasp and hand-eye coordination while engaging their sense of touch.
Letter Pasta Sensory Bottle: Create a “Alphabet Seek-and-Find” Sensory Bottle by filling a clear plastic bottle with dry alphabet pasta. Add a few small, colorful beads or buttons to make it more visually stimulating. You can also include a few small trinkets or themed charms to match a specific letter (e.g., a tiny apple for “A”). Seal the bottle tightly with glue to prevent any spills. Here are other sensory bottle ideas to use, like adding scrabble letter tiles to the sensory bottle as an I spy activity.
Pasta Art and Letter Matching: Have kids glue dry alphabet pasta onto construction paper to create letter art or spell out simple words. For an extra challenge, provide them with a printed word and have them match the letters using the pasta. This activity develops both fine motor skills and visual-motor integration as they match letters and manipulate the small pieces. It’s a great letter recognition activity!
This was such a fun activity! I found a bag of alphabet pasta at a local grocery store on sale for a dollar and couldn’t pass it up! We used a little from the bag and used the rest in wedding soup. (Little Guy’s most often request and favorite meal!) Because the only thing that makes wedding soup even more awesome is fun shaped noodles 🙂
How to dye alphabet Pasta
We dyed the pasta in a baggie…added a few drops of red food coloring and 2 Tbsp of vinegar. We dyed this batch back in May and the color is still going strong. The vinegar doesn’t leave an odor when playing with the pasta, but helps the coloring to “stick” to the pasta.
Have the kids shake the bag (or use a lidded plastic container for a fun auditory component!) and get their wiggles out.
I put up a few strips of masking tape on our easel and put out the bowl of pasta. Baby Girl had the job of scooping letters from the bowl onto a plate. She loved using my measuring spoons to scoop. Toddlers seem to love scooping any little bits…peas/beans/rice/sand…and it’s such a great fine motor task for them.
Pinching those little letters was a fun fine motor exercise for working on their tripod grasp and pincer grasp.
I positioned the tape strips high up on the easel to encourage an extended wrist. This wrist position allows for efficient use of the fingers in such a small motor activity.
Big Sister worked on locating letters as I told her how to spell words.
…Baby Girl couldn’t let her big sister do something and NOT get involved…
We also used the alphabet letter pasta to work on a little reading/spelling activity: I stuck on the -AT letters and asked Big Sister to find the letter we needed to spell different rhyming words. Fun!
Alphabet letter pasta can be used in many ways! How do you use this sensory activity to learn and play?
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
This quick and easy rainbow writing activity is an easy handwriting activity to working on letter formation and letter construction. Rainbow writing handwriting is a strategy to work on letter formation as a multisensory learning activity for kids. This handwriting activity is an Easy Handwriting strategy that can be so helpful in teaching letter formation and pencil control.
You can practice letters with rainbow writing using different utensils. We used rainbow writing with chalk before too.
What is Rainbow Writing
Rainbow writing might be a handwriting activity that you’ve heard of before. Many times, we see rainbow writing as an option for practicing sight words or high frequency words, especially as a multi-sensory learning options.
Typically, you’ll see rainbow writing as one way that kids can practice writing words and letters: They are asked to write the words in a color of the rainbow and then trace over those letters with another color, thus making a rainbow of letters.
Rainbow writing is a great strategy for practicing handwriting! Kids get multiple attempts at forming letters, working on motor planning, pencil placement, and repetition (practice) that very much plays a part in handwriting legibility.
Things to Watch for with Rainbow Writing
When tracing, there are some things to consider. Especially with rainbow writing, kids can develop bad letter formation habits. Read through this resource on tracing sheets to see the pros and cons of tracing with kids.
Some things you’ll want to consider about rainbow writing activities:
Be sure to watch how the student starts the letters when they rainbow write. It can be easy to start a poor muscle memory for writing the letters if they start at the wrong starting point or form the letters incorrectly. When they rainbow write each letter and it progressively gets worse, this can create an incorrect motor plan in the handwriting process.
Make sure the child that is using rainbow writing to practice letters don’t progressively move their pencil in bigger and bigger strokes as they include each color.
Some kids tend to make the rainbow letters with colors next to each other like a rainbow rather than tracing on top of each color. Ask the student to make a mixed up rainbow by tracing right on top of each color.
How to use Rainbow Writing for handwriting
Rainbow writing is a way to work on legibility of written work.
Helping kids write letters with correct letter formation is essential for legibility, especially as kids get older and are required to produce more written work at a faster rate. Consider the high school student that needs to rapidly jot down notes. If letters are formed from bottom to top or in sections, their speed and legibility will drastically drop. Sometimes it is speed OR legibility that suffers when a child needs to produce more amounts of written work in a specific period of time (i.e. copying down notes as a teacher rattles off details.
The younger student will be affected by inaccuracies in letter formation as well. Around the third grade, students are responsible for jotting down their homework assignments into a planner.
When the child is bombarded by classroom sensory input (pencil sharpeners, students, desk chairs moving, hallway distractions, coughing classmates…) difficulties with letter formation can result in illegible homework lists and trouble with re-reading the assignment list when the student attempts to start on homework.
Rainbow Writing Color Changing Activity
There’s more to rainbow writing than incorporating colors and sensory experiences into handwriting. Color Mixing Rainbow Writing is a creative way to help kids learn the right way to actually form letters, because the task allows children to self-correct their written work right in the moment.
They can see where their letter formation has veered into poor letter size or placement. Rainbow writing then becomes a strategy to improve motor planning in handwriting and pencil control as well.
Affiliate links are included below.
In the handwriting activity shared here, we are taking rainbow writing a step further.
This letter formation activity is really simple and a LOT of fun. Kids can work on typical motor pattern of letters by exploring color mixing.
MATERIALS for Rainbow Writing
When you rainbow write, a student can use different colors of crayons, markers, colored pencils, or even chalk. You can use colors of the rainbow, or if you want to work on color changing, use just a couple of the colors.
You’ll need just three markers for this activity.
Red, Yellow and Blue markers are all you need to work on letter formation with color mixing. We used dollar store markers, but also tried these washable markers (affiliate link- As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases.) and the activity worked too.
How to rainbow write with color changing
For this activity, you’ll need to first write the letters that you are working on in one color. Then, using another color, trace over the letters to create a new color.
2. Mixing the yellow and red made orange letters and mixing the yellow and blue markers made green letters.
Kids can work on letter formation but experience the color changing of the markers when they write over letters in different colors.
Some different options to try with this rainbow writing activity:
Use just 2 colors so kids can try mixing two primary colors to see what the colors make
Not when the colors do not change: did they marker lines go off the lines? Can letters be written again or can the student try again to make the colors change?
Some kids may benefit from a model that is written in one color by the teacher, therapist, or parent. Then, the student can try to keep their letters on the lines to ensure proper size, spacing, and formation
Try making color coded messages to one another using the color changing activity
Work on phonetic awareness, by making vowels or phenomes one color and consonants or letter blends another color.
Tips for Rainbow Writing
Because kids can develop bad habits with rainbow writing, here are some things to keep in mind.
Work on letter formation with this activity by providing kids with the amount of assistance they need to form letters correctly. At first, they may need verbal, physical, and visual cues to form letters correctly.
Encourage students to form the letters from top to bottom and in the correct way. When they re-trace the letters with a second color, be sure they are forming and tracing the letters correctly.
When kids trace over the colors, they will be forming letters slowly in order to trace over the letters and ensuring the colors mix.
By tracing over the lines to form letters, they are building the typical motor patterns needed to write the letters correctly and efficiently.
We worked on cursive letters with this activity, but it would work very well with printed letters, particularly letters that are typically reversed or confused like b and d reversals.
Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:
Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
Colors Roll & Write Page
Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Have you heard of rainbow writing? How about chalk rainbow writing? There are many fine motor and visual motor skills that are used when using rainbow writing as a handwriting practice strategy! Let’s break down what rainbow writing is and how this chalk writing activity is a skill-builder for letter formation. Also check out our handwriting library for more ideas.
Tracing letters with chalk is a handwriting practice strategy that helps to build muscle memory when learning letter formations. You can rainbow write on paper or with different utensils such as crayons, colored pencils, markers, or chalk!
Tracing Letters with Chalk
Tracing letters with chalk is a colorful way to practice letter formation. The strategy builds skills in visual motor and hand eye coordination in order to trace over the lines of a letter.
When you use chalk tracing to practice a letter or a word, the child traces over the letter with each color of the rainbow.
They will end up with 6 or 7 trials in writing over the letter.
Some things to consider with tracing with chalk
Tracing over letters with chalk, crayons, or colored pencils is a powerful strategy when practicing letter formation and the line awareness needed for letter size and line placement.
Read through this resource on tracing sheets to see the pros and cons of tracing with kids.
Some things you’ll want to consider about chalk tracing writing activities:
Be sure to watch how the student starts the letters. It can be easy to start a poor muscle memory for writing the letters if they start at the wrong starting point or form the letters incorrectly. This creates an incorrect motor plan in the handwriting process.
Make sure the letters don’t progressively get worse as the student traces over the letters when rainbow writing.
Some kids tend to make the rainbow letters with colors next to each other like a rainbow rather than tracing on top of each color. Ask the student to make a mixed up rainbow by tracing right on top of each color.
Rainbow Writing with chalk
We did rainbow writing with chalk one day. This was a great way to work on letter formation while outside because there was the added benefit of playing on the ground.
Using chalk to practice letters supports development by adding proprioceptive input through the core, strengthens the shoulder girdle for adding more stability for writing, as well as adding strength and stability to the wrist. It’s also a great way to focus on wrist range of motion exercises in a fun way.
We have a big ol’ bucket of chalk that we play with almost everyday. Our sidewalk and driveway have been know to be very colorful at times! We took the chalk to our sidewalk squares one day this week and practiced a little letter formation.
Our sidewalk squares were the perfect area to practice forming letters accurately. I used simple verbal cues to describe the formation of each letter (big line down, little curve around, little line) and we started in the corner of each square as we made the letters.
I made the letter first and Big Sister and Little Guy watched. Then we went to work making our letters very colorful!
Tracing the letters over and over again was a great way to practice accurate formation. Big Sister got into this activity. Little Guy only wanted to make a few letters that are in his name.
When the child is tracing the letters over and over again, they become more efficient at planning out and executing the movements needed to make a letter accurately. This activity is great for a new writer because they are given a confined space to practice a letter, and visual cues (and verbal prompts from mom).
Use the activities and ideas in The Handwriting Book for more ways to work on writing skills.
The Handwriting Book is a comprehensive resource created by experienced pediatric OTs and PTs.
The Handwriting Book covers everything you need to know about handwriting, guided by development and focused on function. This digital resource is is the ultimate resource for tips, strategies, suggestions, and information to support handwriting development in kids.
The Handwriting Book breaks down the functional skill of handwriting into developmental areas. These include developmental progression of pre-writing strokes, fine motor skills, gross motor development, sensory considerations, and visual perceptual skills. Each section includes strategies and tips to improve these underlying areas.
Strategies to address letter and number formation and reversals
Ideas for combining handwriting and play
Activities to practice handwriting skills at home
Tips and strategies for the reluctant writer
Tips to improve pencil grip
Tips for sizing, spacing, and alignment with overall improved legibility
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Did you know there is a specific order to teach cursive letters to promote cursive writing legibility and carryover of cursive handwriting? Occupational therapy providers work with the occupation of handwriting and cursive letters are part of that process. In this post, you’ll learn about cursive writing order to teach letters of the alphabet, including the Handwriting Without Tears letter order for teaching cursive. The order that kids should learn the cursive alphabet, including print letter patterns that are directly transferable to cursive alphabet letters.
Using a developmental approach to teaching cursive letters supports children and sets them up for success.
order to teach cursive letters
The order that cursive letters are taught is based on development of skills. Just like the order to teach printed letter formation is based on development of pencil control skills, visual motor skills, cursive letter order is also taught developmentally.
This means that letters are grouped into similar pencil strokes, or letter families.
Learning to write the alphabet in cursive, writing one’s name in cursive, and writing words in cursive is something that many kids want to do around the second grade.
It’s around second grade, or 7-8 years of age that fine motor skills develop in such a way that pencil control and graded precision are developed to enable greater in-hand manipulation, and movement through the range of mobility in the thumb and intrinsic muscles within the hand.
This enables pencil movements to become more mobile and fluid, which are pre-requisites for cursive writing skills.
Prior to this skill achievement, handwriting is taught based on pencil strokes, including uppercase letters before lowercase letters because of the developmental aspect of learning letter formations.
Cursive seems like a “grown up” style of communication that kids see adults or older students using and they try to make swoopy writing on their own.
Some children can be very motivated to learn to write the alphabet in cursive and use it in their written work.
However, one tip for teaching children to write in cursive is to go through the letters in an order that makes sense according to the pencil movements needed to create the letters.
Writing cursive letters in a group of similar pencil strokes is helpful for carryover of pencil control practice and letter formation. Here is more information on teaching groups of similar cursive letters together in a chunk, or cursive letter families.
Once kids have a start on cursive letter formation, they can practice in creative ways like on the window.
Other children who may not be exposed to cursive written work might have their first exposure to cursive in the classroom. Still other students might be in a public or private classroom where cursive handwriting has been dropped from the curriculum. These kids may need extra practice at home or might need to learn cursive handwriting from the very beginning.
But where to start when teaching kids (or adults!) the cursive writing alphabet and how to form words in cursive? Read on for tips and strategies to get started on learning cursive letters.
Cursive Letters Order
We’ve touched on cursive handwriting in previous posts, include a small piece about starting to teach cursive letters. This strategy will outline the alphabet and the letter order to make learning cursive more easy, based on learning letters in a developmental and progressive order.
There are print letter patterns that are directly transferable to cursive letters.
These are cursive letters that are formed similarly to their printed letter counterparts. The muscle movements of the hands that are used to form some printed letters are directly related to the same letters. For this reason, it’s a good idea to start with these letters when learning the cursive writing alphabet.
The printed letter patterns that make up some letters will transfer directly to cursive, and when formed with a few subskills, cursive letter formation will easily follow (in most cases):
Left-to-right strokes
Good starting points
Direction of movement
Consistent stopping points
Control of downstrokes
Smooth rhythm
Given the subskills noted above, cursive letter formation will lend to more legible letter formation. Often times, learning correct letter formation and motor practice will help with legibility and ease of cursive writing into a viable form of written communication.
Cursive Letter Order Patterns
If you take a look at cursive letters, you might see a pattern that is similar among the letters. This is part of why we use a cursive pre-writing lines approach when teaching cursive for the first time.
You’ll see pencil and paper activities that support this pencil movement with different pencil strokes:
Upswing (the line to start a cursive i or t)
Downswing (the line to start a cursive c or a)
Both of these movements can transfer to different starting lines for the other letters. The muscles used to make these lines can then transfer to the other starting movements. Check out our blog post on cursive beginning lines for more information on this concept.
Heling kids to start off with confidence in pencil control to make these beginning strokes supports confidence when learning cursive letters from the start!
When teaching the cursive alphabet, where to begin?
These letters have print patterns that are directly transferable to their cursive letters. This is related to the pencil strokes that are used to form the cursive letters. For this reason, there is a different order to teach cursive lowercase letters compared to their uppercase letter counterpart.
When we consider printed letters, we can directly translate the pencil strokes to some of the cursive letter counterparts. This means that learning the cursive letter form of the letter should be easier based on knowledge of the printed letter’s form.
Having letter recognition skills for printed letters supports the ability to learn cursive letters. For example, there are printed letters which directly translate to the pencil strokes in cursive:
t, i, and u and w transfer to their cursive letter counterparts.
e and l transfer to their cursive letter counterparts.
n, m, p, and h transfer to their cursive letter counterparts.
a, c, d, q, and o transfer to their cursive letter counterparts.
j and g transfer to their cursive letter counterparts.
This means that the remaining letters are the only ones that need to be taught as a new handwriting motor plan in mind. Those letters include:
b, f, k, r, s, v, x, y, and z
We can help learners with this group by calling them cousins or relatives to their printed letter counterpart because they are similar, but different.
Lowercase Cursive Letters
The following letters transfer directly to their cursive letter forms: c, a, d, g, o, q, i, t, u, j, e, l, f, h, p, n, and m.
Knowing that there are letters that use similar motor plans as a starting point, it is recommended to follow an order when teaching lowercase cursive letters:
c, a, d, g, q – These letters can be considered “wave letters” because of the beginning stroke.
i, t, p, u, w, j – These letters can be considered the “tree letters” because of the beginning line to swing up. e, l, f, h – These letters can be considered the “loop letters” because of the loop that the pencil makes.
k, r, s
b, o, v – These letters can be considered the “tow truck letters” because of the ending connection.
m, n, y, x, z – These letters can be considered the “bump letters” because of the beginning pencil stroke.
Uppercase cursive letters
Upper case cursive letters should be presented in a specific order as well:
A, C, O, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, P, R, B, H, K, N, M, I, J, E, L, I, J, Q
This letter order uses a combination of research-based strategies and focuses on movement based patterns as well as common letter formations, i.e. the way the letters connect to form words. Read about how to connect cursive letters for specifics.
In general, it’s considered that the baseline connecting letters are taught prior to the middle line connecting letters. This isn’t accurate for the Learning Without Tears program (Handwriting Without Tears cursive letter order) when it comes to letter w which is taught near the beginning, due to it’s direct translation from the printed version of letter w.
This upper case cursive letter order (or cursive capital letters) order teaches upper case letters that are similar to lower case letters first. Always teach lower case cursive letters before upper case letters.
The Handwriting Book breaks down the functional skill of handwriting into developmental areas. These include developmental progression of pre-writing strokes, fine motor skills, gross motor development, sensory considerations, and visual perceptual skills. Each section includes strategies and tips to improve these underlying areas.
Strategies to address letter and number formation and reversals
Ideas for combining handwriting and play
Activities to practice handwriting skills at home
Tips and strategies for the reluctant writer
Tips to improve pencil grip
Tips for sizing, spacing, and alignment with overall improved legibility
A final note on teaching cursive letters
Sometimes, cursive letters are taught as a writing format for children that struggle with the motor plan to form and use legible printed handwriting. This might be the case for several reasons:
The motor plan to form printed letters is choppy and difficult to recall the different pencil strokes for each letter.
Cursive letters use a smoother flow to form letters. The continuous hand movements can be easier for some students because it involves fewer stops and starts compared to print writing.
The challenge of letter reversals and letter confusion that occurs with dysgraphia can mean that cursive writing may be easier to learn and use than printed handwriting. This is because cursive letters connect with continuous pencil strokes, leading to less letter reversals and other common writing errors associated with dysgraphia.
Just like printed handwriting, cursive letters are one form of written expression however, there are differences when it comes to legibility. Perfect formation and pencil strokes are not always necessary!
Cursive Letters Tips
We have many blog posts here on The OT Toolbox that support cursive letter writing. Explore these activities and tools to teach the cursive alphabet.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
In this older blog post, we shared how to make your own bottle cap letters for multisensory learning and fine motor play. Creating DIY instructional materials can be both educational and fun. One creative idea is to make bottle cap alphabet letters.
Bottle Cap Letters
By collecting various bottle caps and adding individual letters to them, you can create a unique set of bottle cap letters. This homemade alphabet set can be used for matching big and small letters, helping children learn the alphabet in an engaging way. Kids can enjoy the tactile experience of sorting and matching the big and small bottle cap letters, making it a hands-on learning activity that enhances their letter recognition skills!
This Letter Learning game was something I made for Big Sister a couple of years ago. We have played with the letter bottle caps so many times and in a ton of ways.
How to make bottle cap letters
You’ll need just a few materials:
26 bottle caps (one for each letter of the alphabet)
Label paper
Marker
Cardboard for a play mat
The cardboard has upper case letters and the bottle caps are used to match the letters.
It doesn’t matter what size bottle caps you use because you cut the label paper to fit the caps. If you use a lot of milk in your home, or have access to a bunch of bottle caps in the same size, use those.
In our case, we had a case or two of Gatorade bottles and used those bottle caps to make our letters.
I used a sheet of label paper to make the lower case letters.
Trace a bunch of circles in the correct size.
Cut out the circles.
Write the letters.
Stick them to the bottle caps. Easy!
How to use alphabet bottle caps
Our homemade bottle cap letters are a great DIY instructional material to use in learning and play.
We’ve also played with the bottle caps in play dough,
Use them to spell names and words.
Move the bottle cap alphabet to label objects with it’s starting letter.
Work on learning which direction the “p”, “b”, and “d” should go. This is a great hands-on activity to target letter reversals!
They are so great to manipulate and play with in a sensory bin filled with corn, too.
Or, pair the letter bottle caps with our alphabet exercises to target fine motor and gross motor skills.
How else can we play with these bottle caps??
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Writing trays are a fantastic way to help kids work on handwriting, letter formation, and pre-writing skills. There are so many benefits to a sand tray (or other sensory writing materials) in helping with letter formation and handwriting. There is a reason that writing trays are a popular way to encourage fine motor skills and an introduction to handwriting; They use a tactile sensory strategy to encourage movement in learning in a multi-sensory way. Writing Trays make letter formation fun and meaningful in a play-based manner.
Amazon affiliate links are included in this blog post. As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases.
What is a writing tray?
I’ve used writing trays in my occupational therapy interventions and with my own kids for years. Writing trays are such a powerful tool to add a multi-sensory component and moveemnt to learning to write.
Writing trays are a dry or wet sensory material in a low tray or bin type of container. Children can use their finger or a tool such as a pencil, paint brush, or other item to draw, write letters, or form numbers into the sensory material.
Writing Trays are a creative way to help kids learn to write letters, numbers, shapes, and pre-writing strokes. There are a ton of different ways that writing trays can be set up and used in letter formation. Essentially, a writing tray uses a low container (or TRAY) and a medium that can be moved and shifted for writing.
Sensory writing trays can contain sensory fillers of any type. If you are able to move the material in a way that letters can be drawn in the tray, then the sensory writing tray is a success. With a sensory writing tray, children can write letters independently or copy letters from a visual letter card.
You can find them used in schools, clinics, preschools, early learning centers, and homeschool dinging rooms.
Writing Trays are filled with a filler that us manipulated and shifted so that letters or writing lines are visible. Some ideas for filling a writing tray include the sensory materials listed below.
Sand (affiliate link) Colored Sand Rice Dyed Rice Salt Dyed Rice Play Dough (affiliate link) Other Doughs Sugar Flour Cornmeal Slime (Check out the fun we had with slime in a writing tray!) Spices (affiliate link) Crushed Chalk (affiliate link)
While sometimes, a child can use their finger to form the lines in their writing tray, a writing tool is typically recommended. (More on that below.)
Sensory Writing Tray Benefits
Kids can use writing trays to practice letter formation, or pencil control and stroke sequence in writing letters.
Typically, they will be provided with a visual cue or cue card for copying the letters/numbers/shapes.
Other times, kids can form the letter/number/shape independently when prompted to make a specific letter. This is a great way to work on visual memory and independent letter formation.
Be sure to verbally prompt children to form letters or build letters with correct stroke sequence. This is essential for carryover of accuracy with letter formation in handwriting.
Otherwise, the child is simply playing in the sensory tray and not effectively using the writing tray as a tool for improved handwriting.
Encouraging the child who is learning pre-writing strokes and beginning letter formation can use a writing tray as a base for forming letters independently. Try using visual and verbal cues to promote correct letter construction.
A few more must-dos when using a writing tray for addressing letter formation:
Make sure letters are not formed in parts. In other words, don’t allow kids to make a circle and then a line to form an “a”.
Make sure letters are formed from top to bottom.
Realize that the motor plan to form letters with your finger is different than the motor plan to form letters with a pencil or other pencil-like writing tool.
The nice thing about writing trays is that they are very versatile. Students of all ages can use writing trays to work on different levels of handwriting. Some ways to work on handwriting include:
A writing tray can be an effective tool in boosting fine motor skills. Kids can use their finger to form lines and letters while strengthening finger isolation and separation of the two sides of the hand, including an opportunity for the ulnar side fingers to tuck into the palm for a more effective pencil grasp when writing.
Children can also use a tool to form letters in a writing tray. This can be an opportunity to develop pencil grasp.
However. There are a few items that should be mentioned about using a writing tray to address pencil grasp and appropriate motor plan for letter formation.
Writing Trays are a common tool. But if you just place a writing tray in front of a child, you will likely see an inefficient writing activity. You will probably see most kids forming letters with an awkward grasp on the writing tool, a flexed and deviated wrist, an abducted shoulder, and generally ineffective positioning.
Positioning absolutely carries over to letter formation and handwriting.
A writing tray can be used to address pencil grasp and handwriting needs. However, it is essential to use the tray in a proper manner. There are a few ways to do this:
Place the writing tray on a slight slant. Try using a DIY slant board.
Use a low edged tray.
Use verbal, physical, and visual cues for appropriate positioning.
Position the writing tool in your child’s hand with an appropriate tripod or modified tripod grasp.
Show the child how to hold the tool at the end of the tool as if they were holding a pencil.
Once you’ve got your writing tray set up and positioning taken care of, it’s on to the fun stuff…making a writing tray!
How to make a Writing Tray
Making a writing tray to gain benefits of teaching sensory handwriting is easy. You can use materials found around the home.
The options are limitless when it comes to writing tray combinations! You can create a writing tray in any theme or to meet any need. You’ll need just a few items: a container, a filler, a tool, and letter cards.
Writing Tray Ideas
First, you’ll need a low tray, basket, bin, or other container. We’ve used a variety of containers in our sensory writing trays. You’ll want a container that will hold the sensory writing material within its edges.
In some cases, you can even scatter the sensory material on a flat surface like a table or a plastic table cloth on the floor. For example, we used dyed rice right on the kiddie picnic table for a pre-writing and hand strengthening activity.
Kids will be using a tool or their hands to write letters and the sensory material can scatter. Some specific ideas include:
Kitchen baking trays (jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with edges)
Food storage containers
Melissa and Doug wooden puzzle boxes
Cardboard boxes cut low on the sides
9×11 cake pan
Shirt box
Tray
Low basket
Writing Tray Tools
Next, you’ll need a tool to use to write the letters. This can be items found in the home as well. Some writing tray tools include:
Next, an important part of a writing tray is the letter model. As mentioned above, writing trays are great for copying pre-writing lines, shapes, letters, numbers, and words.
Cards can be used as a visual model for forming letters or words. Some cards include direction arrows. Others might include a sight word or spelling word for the child to copy. These cards can be positioned in different positions to address different needs.
Position the letter cards right in the tray for near-point copying.
Position the writing tray cards in a vertical position near the writing tray to challenge vision shift.
Hang the writing cards on a wall for far point copying to work on visual shift, visual attention, visual memory, and copying from a distance.
Writing Tray Fillers
You’ll also need a sensory material to act as a filler. This is the material that the child will actually “write” in. When we say “write”, they are using the tool to form letters as the sensory filler moves in the tray. They will not actually write a letter with a pencil or other marking device. Sensory filler material can be as creative as you let it. Some writing tray fillers include these materials:
Click each link for ideas on how to set up these creative writing trays.
As you can see, the ideas are limitless when it comes to sensory handwriting! Use a theme or materials that meet the needs of your child or client and are motivating and fun!
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Sand Writing Tray
One very easy way to create a sand writing tray is to use a child’s picnic table placed either outside in a sandbox or over a tarp (or outdoor space where it’s ok that sand goes into the ground and lawn).
We loved using our kid’s picnic table in this way to make a sand writing tray.
For this sand writing tray, we made it super simple and just dumped a thin layer of sand onto our (Amazon link) Little Tykes picnic table. Then, I invited the kids to all sit down and draw in the sand using their fingertips. This is a great exercise in finger isolation.
Practicing letters in a sensory surface like writing and drawing in sand on a picnic table surface is a motivating and fun activity for kids because it’s not something they typically do.
Kids learn new skills well with a multisensory learning experience and a sand writing tray is a great, inexpensive way to do just that.
To encourage vocabulary and verbal expression, tell stories on the table surface and ask questions that extend the story further. Then, while practicing lines and drawing shapes and figures, gently smooth the sand with the palm of your hand and start over again!
Preschoolers can practice pre-handwriting lines, while older kids can form letters and numbers in the sand. They can also copy and trace letters to improve their penmanship skills.
When it comes to managing the long winter with activities, this winter number tracing worksheet has you covered. Be sure to read up on our recommended use of tracing sheets as a tool to support functional writing. Use the printable below along with our winter number tracing worksheet to talk with kids about winter clothing AND work on number formation. It’s a winter printable that you’ll want to add to your therapy toolbox! Also be sure to grab our winter crossword puzzle and our winter clothes worksheet (for visual perception) as a tool to build visual motor skills.
You’ll want to grab this winter worksheet because it covers number formation and writing numbers with a wintery theme!
Kids also love this mitten printable to race the mittens across the page whild building motor skills.
Free Winter Number Tracing Worksheet
On the winter worksheet, you’ll find number writing spaces where the user can trace numbers. By practicing numbers through tracing, you give the user the opportunity to practice the motor plan needed to form the number. We talk about the occupational therapy provider’s perspective on tracing in our resource on tracing sheets. Specific for this winter clothing activity, we wanted to add the number practice option along with a few other ways to practice specific skills.
Winter means different things for different people depending on their climate. Winter in the southern United States means adding a sweatshirt, possibly a hat at the bus stop early in the morning. In the northern states winter is a different story. Up north, winter starts in mid- September and seems to last until May. I have northern roots but am a southern girl by heart.
Winter months in cold areas of the world mean bundling up and adding clothes. Mittens, hats, coats, snow pants, boots, gloves, earmuffs, thick socks, long johns, and lots of layers are the customary daily garb. Imagine trying to put this on and off a toddler each time you head out! As soon as you get your child decked out in all these layers, they usually announce the need to go to the toilet! It never fails.
Since bundling up is a daily chore in the frozen north, why not add it to your treatment plan? The Warm Winter Clothes Number Trace Worksheet is a cute printable to build essential skills while using meaningful, relevant content.
Tracing Numbers Worksheets
Let’s talk tracing so you can use it to the maximum benefit and its intended purpose.
I am not a fan of tracing unless it is used correctly, or the objective is understood. Here is information on the benefits of tracing.
Tracing is not going to teach number/letter formation if the learner does not know what those figures are. To a learner who does not know these symbols, they will be tracing lines, not numbers or letters
Know your audience. If your learner does not know the letters or numbers, use the activity as a fine motor task to develop dexterity
Kinesthetic awareness. This long word means to learn by doing. Theoretically if a person writes the number 5 enough times, the body will start to recognize this pattern and commit it to memory. This only works if the learner understands what is being traced. Using our sandpaper writing trick is one great way to incorporate kinesthetic awareness into number tracing and number formation.
Tracing for dexterity. This is the type of tracing I like best. Tracing for dexterity works on staying on the lines, fine motor control, building hand muscles, scanning and a whole host of other important skills as defined below
Winter Clothes Worksheet
While worksheets are not a favorite among occupational therapists, there are ways to support skill areas by using worksheets to meet the needs of kids. When we address the underlying skill areas to support function, printables like this winter clothes worksheet can address a variety of areas.
What does this winter number tracing worksheet work on besides tracing?
Kinesthetic awareness – This means learning by doing.
Hand strength and dexterity – staying on the lines builds hand muscles and develops muscle control. Check out theIn Hand Manipulation Printable Worksheet to incorporate developing the intrinsic hand muscles.
Visual motor skills –Combining what is seen visually and what is written motorically. This takes coordination to be able to translate information from visual input to motor output. Coloring, drawing, counting, cutting, and tracing are some visual motor skills.
Visual Perception – Developing figure ground to see where one item start and finishes, scanning to find all answers, and visual closure to understand that dotted lines will create something.
Strength – Core strength needed for sitting, shoulder/elbow/wrist stability, finger strength, and head control all play their role in writing.
Bilateral Coordination – Be sure your learner uses their helper hand for stabilizing the paper while using their dominant hand for writing.
Counting/Learning Numbers – Count the items to understand number concepts in addition to tracing them.
Social/Executive Function – Following directions, turn taking, task completion, orienting to details, neatness, multi-tasking, attending to task, and impulse control can be addressed using this Warm Winter Clothing Printable PDF.
When using a task such as this number tracing worksheet, therapists can utilize and focus on all the above skills or just one or two. There are times when I am working more on executive function than fine motor skills but will use this task with more of my focus on these executive function skills. My note might not say much about their number formation, counting skills, or neatness, but how well they were able to attend to the task, complete the task, follow directions, and control their impulses.
Winter Clothing Printable
There are so many ways to use this winter clothing printable to work on number tracing, and more.
How do I incorporate or modify this task for the needs of all my learners?
Lots of ways! As always, this sheet can be laminated for reusability or marker use, printed on different colored paper for readability, enlarged or made smaller, made simpler or more complex. Try having learners color the shapes and write the numbers independently on the back to add more visual motor tasks to this winter clothes worksheet.
This covers one day of winter, what about the other 240?
Glad you asked! The OT Toolbox is stuffed with activities, blog posts and work pages to fill those winter days. The Winter Fine Motor Kit full of handouts and PDF files provides several visual motor tasks to be used throughout the winter season.
Plus, in The OT Toolbox Members Club, you’ll find winter clothing printables and resources to address a variety of needs.
Winter is a very long season. Especially if you are not a fan of the cold weather (author raises hand). Adding fun activities and games can take some of the monotony and sting out of the long cold days.
Brrrrrr, bundle up!
Free WINTER NUMBER TRACING WORKSHEET
Want to access this printable number tracing worksheet? Enter your email address into the form below. You can also find this winter clothing printable in The OT Toolbox Member’s Club.
Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.
Watch for more winter clothes worksheets and winter printables coming to this space.
If you are teaching kids to write in cursive handwriting, these tips on how to write cursive a will help with a starter letter that supports the development of cursive writing skills. Writing letter a in cursive might seem like a good place to start when teaching cursive writing (after all, it’s the beginning of the alphabet!), but actually, you’ll want to start developmentally by teaching cursive letters in a sequential order.
How to Write Cursive a
Teaching cursive handwriting is a challenge for many parents and teachers. Taking it step-by-step is key. Here, you will find strategies for how to write cursive letter a. Many times, there is not a specific curriculum that schools use and teachers need to scramble for resources and THEN fit handwriting time into an already jam packed day.
That’s why here at The OT Toolbox, you will find cursive writing tools that can be easily added into a school day. So, if you are wondering how to teach cursive writing, then you are in luck, because we have specific tips and tricks to teach cursive letters a-z.
Here you will find tricks and tips to write cursive a…in fun ways!
Lowercase cursive letter a is one of the wave letters. The letters c, a, d, g, q, and o make up these letters that contain similar letter strokes. That’s why when children are taught to write in cursive, these letters are typically grouped together. We talked about how cursive letters are related and grouped into cursive letter families.
Teaching cursive letters in groups helps with letter formation, including the motor plan to form similar letters. When kids can practice cursive with a sensory approach to writing letters, they engage multiple senses along with the motor movements to form each letter. Grouping them into like letters makes the learning easier.
a in Cursive…where to start?
Start by reviewing how to form cursive c.
Start by reviewing and practicing cursive letter c. Cursive letter c (and cursive a) is a wave letter. Starting with some pencil strokes and multi-sensory practice of the wave formation is a good place to begin. Try some multi-sensory approaches to build motor planning for forming cursive a.
Hold a small crafting pom pom or cotton ball in the thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger. This positions the hand into a tripod grasp and “wakes up” the muscles for writing.
Holding the cotton ball, students can use whole arm motions to “draw” an imaginary wave in the air. Encourage them to be sure to re-trace the wave so it has a big curved portion at the top or crest of the wave. Here is more information on teaching wave letters.
By re-tracing that wave back down to the bottom, they can see the letter “c” or the beginning part of a letter a forming.
One tip to get that line really formed with re-trace is to tell kids that they want the wave to be great for surfing under. If the wave is fat at the bottom, it’s not a surfing wave. We want to see a wave that is ready to fall over and crash so a surfer can surf right along the inside of the wave.
Making a string of cursive c’s or a wave with several waves together is a good exercise.
Next, turn cursive c into a cursive a.
Once that curved c is reviewed, and the students are tracing back over their wave lines so the curve looks like a single line, it’s time to turn lowercase c into lowercase a.
Teach cursive a by telling students to form a cursive c that looks like a wave ready to crash over.
Their pencil should trace back over the wave line and move along the baseline. The pencil should move straight up to the top of the wave and pause where the wave is just about to tip over.
Next, the pencil should trace strait back down to the bottom line of the paper. Then, the pencil can move along the baseline to connect to the next letter. Here are tips to teach cursive letter connections.
Here are those cursive writing directions listed out:
Write a cursive c with the top of the wave ready to crash.
Move the pencil along the baseline and up to touch the tip of the wave.
Pull the pencil strait down to the baseline.
Curve away to connect.
Poor Formation of cursive a?
What happens when the cursive a (or other writing in cursive) falls flat? There can be some troubleshooting to do when it comes to writing in cursive. Here are some problems you might see whth letter a.
The lines curving up to the top of the lowercase a aren’t touching- Remind the student to trace back over the curve of their magic c. Review how to make the curve of a letter c.
The “wave” looks to wide- A gaping wave can make the letter a look sloppy. Teach students to trace back over the curve of the along the same line. Try using rainbow writing for this method.
The up line to touch the top of the a is slanted. The a looks
The Handwriting Book is a comprehensive resource created by experienced pediatric OTs and PTs.
The Handwriting Book covers everything you need to know about handwriting, guided by development and focused on function. This digital resource is is the ultimate resource for tips, strategies, suggestions, and information to support handwriting development in kids.
The Handwriting Book breaks down the functional skill of handwriting into developmental areas. These include developmental progression of pre-writing strokes, fine motor skills, gross motor development, sensory considerations, and visual perceptual skills. Each section includes strategies and tips to improve these underlying areas.
Strategies to address letter and number formation and reversals
Ideas for combining handwriting and play
Activities to practice handwriting skills at home
Tips and strategies for the reluctant writer
Tips to improve pencil grip
Tips for sizing, spacing, and alignment with overall improved legibility
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
These clay letters are a fine motor activity we made years ago, but we still use them today in multisensory learning activities. In fact, the clay alphabet is such a great tool for sight word and spelling word manipulatives. This week, we used two of my top Occupational Therapy recommendations in a combined fine motor power activity…to make stamped letters for learning!
We used clay and alphabet stamps to make our own clay letters for hands-on learning, including practicing spelling words, sight words, letter identification, and letter order. This was the perfect learning tool for my second grader, kindergartner, and preschooler!
Clay Letters for multisensory learning
As an Occupational Therapist, I often times recommended using clay as a therapeutic tool. It’s resistive and provides proprioceptive feedback while working on hand strength. Combined with letter stamps, we were able to make our own movable and colorful letters.
You’ll need to start with alphabet stamps for pressing into the clay, and some colorful clay. You’ll want to get the type of clay that quick dries.
We used our Alphabet Stamp Setto press lower case letters into small, rolled balls of modeling clay. I love the bright colors of THIS brand.
To make he clay letters, kids are really strengthening the hands.
First, ask your child to first pull off small pieces of clay from the long rolls. Roll the clay into small balls and gently press them into disks.
Then, have your child find the letters of the alphabet in alphabetical order. Using the Melissa and Doug Alphabet Stamp Set was a great way to further our fine motor work. The size and shape of the letter stamps in this set are perfect for working on intrinsic muscle strength and tripod grasp.
Pressing the stamps into the clay is a nice way to address precision.
Press too hard, and the clay disk is too thin.
Press to lightly, and the letter’s impression is not deep enough in the clay. This precision of grasp requires proprioceptive awareness.
The brand of clay that we used does not harden. This makes a nice activity for kids, but if you want to keep your letters, use a modeling clay that does dry out.
Learning Activities with Clay Letters
We used our clay letters in a bunch of different activities. Try some of these hands-on letter activities:
Practice spelling words.
Practice spelling sight words.
Arrange letters on the table. Ask kids to visually scan for letters to find in alphabetical order.
Practice letter identification.
Copy the letters to work on letter formation.
Arrange the letters on a table. Pull out a letter and ask your child to name a word that starts with that letter. Ask them to write the words to practice handwriting.
Practice decodable reading and word building with the clay letters.
More Letter Fine Motor Activities
You’ll love the fine motor activities in our Letters Fine Motor Kit. The printable kit is loaded with letter activities that build fine motor skills. You can grab it and all of the other themed fine motor kits below, to build skills through play.
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
that does dry out.
