spatial awareness Archives - Page 3 of 4

Rainbow Writing Letter Formation Activity

March 1, 2021September 3, 2016 by Colleen Beck

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.

Color mixing rainbow writing activity for helping kids with letter formation

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.

But 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 and pencil control as well.

Rainbow Writing for handwriting legibility

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

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. 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 and the activity worked too.

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. 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.

Rainbow Writing Activity with Color mixing for handwriting.

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’.

Looking for more creative ways to work on handwriting? First, be sure to join the Sweet Ideas for Handwriting Tips Facebook Group. There will be a lot of resources and tips shared there.

Next, check out these creative ways to help kids work on their written work:

Functional Handwriting Practice Ideas

What is Visual Spacing

Visual Tracking Tips and Tools

Handwriting Spacing Tool and Spatial Awareness Tips and Tools

DIY Dry Erase Board Handwriting Travel Kit

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.

Click here to get your copy of the Colors Handwriting Kit.

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.

Map Skills Game for Building Spatial Concepts

December 6, 2022July 8, 2016 by Colleen Beck

Build spatial concepts with a map activity

This map skills game for spatial concepts uses the ability to integrate spatial relations with what the eyes see with motor skills, or eye-hand coordination. It’s a fun map activity for occupational therapy or play!

Similarly, a drawing mind map incorporates spatial awareness on paper with complex thoughts and ideas, just like using a map as a skill-building game might in real life!

Summertime fun in our house means a lot of nights in the backyard with the family. We catch fireflies, play basketball in the driveway, play baseball on the lawn as the sun sets, have fires in the fire pit, and play heated games of tag, hide-and-go-seek, and make lots of summer memories. Most important of all, summer means time with family.

One thing that we love to do as a family is come up with fun games with a lot of running and active play. This backyard map game for building spatial concepts was a great way to play together as a family at the end of a hot summer day.

When the sun starts to set and the fireflies start twinkling, it is so much fun to create family adventures right in the backyard. We used our Energizer headlight and lantern in a family map game that added a directionality learning opportunity to play.

Map Skills Game

Drawing and creating maps is a great skill for kids to practice. Similarly, the process of using drawing mind maps builds on these visual motor skills, as well.

When kids picture a scene in their mind’s eye and use that image to draw a map on paper, they are using higher thinking skills and directional concepts like over, under, around, and through.

This map activity is great for building and developing spatial concepts and higher level thinking right in the backyard, using a map and lights to develop spatial relations.

To play an outdoor map game that builds spatial concepts with the family, first ask your kids to picture their backyard.

Tell them to identify landmarks and borders of the lawn.
Is there a swing set off to the side?
Where is the driveway or a large tree and how do these physical features relate to the back of the house?

Imagining a space and where items are in relation to others allow the child to use spatial relations as they draw them onto paper.

While drawing, kids can decide how to draw aspects of the backyard. They might sketch out a tree or a sandbox area or they might use geometric shapes to represent the items.

A circle could become a tree and a square could become a play area. Kids will have to picture the layout of the backyard and draw the features in relation to one another.

Spatial reasoning is an essential skill needed for tasks such as maneuvering down a crowded hallway, placing words on a line when writing, and understanding spatial concepts such as “left”, “right”, and “next to”.

Once the map is drawn, slip it into a plastic page protector and attach it to a clipboard. Grab your headlight, flashlight, or lantern and take the whole family outside to play a map game in the backyard.

Map Game for Building Spatial Concepts

1. To play the game, have one person hide a small toy like a rubber ball somewhere in the backyard.

2. Then, that person can use a dry erase marker to mark an “X” on the sheet protector to show where the item is hidden.

3. The kids can then use the map to locate the item by determining where the object is on the map. Doing this map game in the dark with a headlight or lantern is a great way to build map reading skills and spatial concepts because the child can’t just scan around the lawn to find the hidden object.

4. They must find the “X” on the map and read the map to locate the physical object hidden in the backyard.

5. Take the learning and spatial concepts a little further by asking your child to verbalize where the object is hidden and ask them to use directionality terms like “to the left”, “beside”, and “right”. They can describe the routes they would take to get to the hidden object.

Using the clipboard to follow a map allows the child to focus on where they are going. My kids loved having a headlamp on for our backyard map game because it freed their hands to hold the clipboard, find and hide the hidden ball, and use the dry erase marker to draw an “X” for the other people in our family.

We played this game over and over again so the erasable dry erase marker and sheet protector allowed us to keep playing long after the sun went down!

I loved playing this backyard map game with my kids and we were excited to use our flashlights to play. The versatile lanterns can be used for so many memory-making activities with the whole family.

From filling up a homemade jar with fireflies in a lit area to lighting a S’more making tray, backyard flashlight games can help make the summer nights full of family memories. Add this outdoor activity to your list of backyard lawn games!

Pre-Writing Lines Activity

April 5, 2022February 18, 2016 by Colleen Beck

Working on the underlying pre-writing skills of handwriting is SO important in handwriting. This pre-writing lines activity is a fun Easter occupational therapy activity, but it’s also a powerful tool for building the foundation for handwriting.

You know we like to share handwriting activities around here, right? This Easter egg pre-writing activity is a fun way for young children to work on pre-writing skills in order to build a base for letter formation and pencil control. While we made this activity an Easter egg-ish shape, you could do this activity any time of year and use any shape to work on pencil control within a confined space.

Related: Try this pre-writing lines fine motor activity to incorporate heavy work feedback in developing prewriting lines.

Preschoolers and Toddlers will love this early handwriting activity! All of these skills are needed before a child can form letters and work on line awareness in Kindergarten. If a child is showing difficulty with forming diagonals in letters like “A” or “M”, this would be a fun way to work on building the skill for improved legibility in written work.

Work on pre-writing lines needed for neat handwriting and letter formation with this wikki stix Easter egg (or any time of the year!) pre-writing and pencil control practice activity.

Pre-Writing Lines Handwriting Precursor Activity

This post contains affiliate links.

We used just a few materials for this activity:

Dry Erase Board
Dry Erase Markers
Wikki Stix

Using THIS Dry Erase Board worked out great for this activity, because we did the same writing activity on the reverse side, which has a chalkboard. Writing with small pieces of chalk is a fantastic fine motor and intrinsic muscle strengthening activity to work on the fine motor skills needed for endurance in drawing and coloring, as well as the tripod grasp needed for an appropriate grasp on the pencil. A chalkboard surface for drawing lines is much more resistant than a smooth dry erase surface, providing more feedback during line formation.

We used these Dry Erase Markers for their fine point and colorful selection, which made making these Easter eggs a creative activity, too. My preschooler loved picking out the colors to create patterns.

The last item we needed for this handwriting precursor activity was Wikki Stix. As an Occupational Therapist, I feel like I’m always pushing the benefits of Wikki Stix. The bendable and mold-able sticks are a great fine motor and handwriting tool. In this activity, I bent one or two wikki stix into an egg shape. You could also make circles, squares, or any shape for your handwriting task.

Developmental Progression of Pre-Writing Strokes

As a child develops, they are typically able to copy lines and shapes with increasing accuracy. Here are the general ages of development for pre-writing lines:

Age 2- Imitates a vertical line from top to bottom

Age 2-Imitates a Horizontal Line

Age 2-Imitates a Circle

Age 3- Copies (After being shown a model) a Vertical Line from top to bottom

Age 3 Copies a Horizontal Line from left to right

Age 3- Imitates a Cross

Age 4- Copies a Cross

Age 4- Copies a Right and Left Diagonal Line

Age 4- Copies a Square

Age 4- Copies an “X”

Age 5- Copies a Triangle

The developmental progression of these shapes allows for accuracy and success in letter formation.

Get a FREE Developmental Progression of Pre-Writing Strokes printable HERE.

Easter Egg Pre-Writing Strokes Activity

For this activity, we used the Wikki Stix to right on the dry erase board. I created egg shaped ovals with the wikki stix. I then showed my preschooler how to draw lines across the eggs to create patterns and designs.

We practiced horizontal lines (going from left to right) and vertical lines (going from top to bottom). We also added circles within the boundaries of the wikki stix and diagonal lines, too.

The physical border provided by the wikki stix gave a nice area and cue for pencil control. Try doing this activity with progressing level of developmental line skill. You can also work on writing letters inside the wikki stix to build spatial and size awareness in handwriting.

Extend the activity:

Use the wikki sticks to do this activity on paper or a chalkboard. Other ideas might be using crayons, markers, or a grease pencil for more feedback through resistance and proprioceptive input to the hands.

More Pre-writing Lines Activities

Some of my favorite Handwriting activities are multi-sensory and incorporate motor planning activities for building pre-writing lines as a foundation for handwriting:

More Easter activities:

Spring Fine Motor Kit

Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!

Developing hand strength, dexterity, dexterity, precision skills, and eye-hand coordination skills that kids need for holding and writing with a pencil, coloring, and manipulating small objects in every day task doesn’t need to be difficult. The Spring Fine Motor Kit includes 100 pages of fine motor activities, worksheets, crafts, and more:

Spring fine motor kit set of printable fine motor skills worksheets for kids.

Lacing cards
Sensory bin cards
Hole punch activities
Pencil control worksheets
Play dough mats
Write the Room cards
Modified paper
Sticker activities
MUCH MORE

Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Grab your copy of the Spring Fine Motor Kit and build coordination, strength, and endurance in fun and creative activities. Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Teaching Kids to Write Their Name the Fun Way!

December 20, 2022April 24, 2015 by Colleen Beck

We are working a lot on writing lower case letters these days. My five year old has been trying so hard to write his name and is a trooper when it comes to practicing. Sometimes it’s not a child’s interest to write letters of their name (and other letters needed in handwriting, too!) This letter forming name writing activity is perfect for kids who need more practice and are just plain tired of writing their name over and over again.

Adding a sensory and motor spin on forming the letters of their name can add interest and fun to handwriting and name writing. Sometimes ordering the letters in name writing can be difficult for young kids. This name building activity is adaptable to so many skill levels of kids who are working on writing their name.

Teaching kids to write their name and practice letter formation with sensory soup

Teaching kids to write their name with sensory and movement:

To practice our name writing with sensory and motor movements, we used these foam craft sticks that we received from our friends at www.craftprojectideas.com. Draw lines across the sticks in 3/4 to one inch increments. Have your child snip the craft sticks into pieces along the lines. This scissor activity was a hit with my son. Snipping the foam craft sticks provides a satisfying texture and allows accuracy with the thick resistance and thicker lines.

Use the small foam pieces to practice letter formation. The small size is perfect for kids who are working on size awareness in their handwriting.

Pressing a pen into the foam surface provides great feedback for letter formation. Use verbal and visual cues.

We used those foam letter pieces to make a sensory soup. Fill a bowl or bin with water and add the foam letters. They will float on the water surface. Visual scanning and picking out the correct letter is a great sensory and fine motor experience. Kids can work on the order of letters in their name as they look for the letters.

name writing and learning activity for kids

I drew a rectangle on a plastic plate and had my son build his name with the letters. The wet foam pieces will stick to the plastic plate. Kids are encouraged to build their name in order while keeping the letters in a line given the visual cue of the rectangle. This is great for kids who will soon be concentrating on line awareness and spatial awareness in name writing in Kindergarten and in older grades. Related, check out our recommendations for name practice in kindergarten.

Teaching kids to build words and name with letter order, spatial awareness, and line awareness

We’ve been having fun with letter formation and handwriting and will be sharing more creative activities soon! For now, check out these ideas for handwriting:

Fun ways to work on Letter Formation:

High-Contrast Letter Formation
Sensory Letter Formation Practice
Tracing Letters: Letter Formation Handwriting Practice with Chalk
Tracing Lines with a DIY Light Box

Tripod Grasp Activities for Kids:

Improving Pencil Grasp With Fine Motor Play Activities
Fine Motor Coordination with a Cereal Box (activity to improve tripod grasp)Gift Guide: Toys to Improve Pencil Grasp

This post is part of Preschool Powol Packet’s name recognition writing series. Stop by and see all of the great ways to practice name formation.

What is Visual Memory?

July 11, 2019February 24, 2015 by Colleen Beck

Have you seen visual perceptual terms like Visual Memory and wondered, exactly What Is Visual Memory? Today we’re sharing how to use our dyed lollipop sticks in a few eye-hand coordination activities including visual memory, and explaining what this term means to development of handwriting, reading, and functional tasks.

What is visual memory and why is it necessary for development of functional skills like handwriting and reading? Tips and activities from to work on visual memory in kids and adults.

This post contains affiliate links.

What is Visual Memory?

Visual Memory is one part of a large arena known as visual perceptual skills. Visual memory focuses on one’s ability to recall visual information that has been seen. Visual memory is a critical factor in reading and writing. When a child is writing a word, he must recall the formation of parts of the letter from memory. It can be terribly frustrating for one with a visual memory deficit to perform a handwriting, spelling, or word copying exercise. Children with difficulty in visual memory will have trouble copying letters, words, and sentences from a chalkboard or book. They may present with very slow handwriting, trouble forming letters, and mixing up letters or words within sentences. Producing written work on worksheets and tests may be difficult. Recalling sight words in reading exercises can be hard as well as following along in a reading activity during stop and start tasks, due to comprehension and difficulty recalling what was read. Kids with visual memory defecits can demonstrate difficulty with formation of letters and numbers and appear “lazy” in their written work.

Visual Memory Shape Building Activity

We used our dyed lollipop sticks to build shapes. Make a shape example and have your child copy the form. You can grade the activity as more difficult by removing the example and having the child build the shape using their “mind’s eye”. Assistance can be provided by giving visual or verbal prompts to assist with building simple shapes. Further extend this visual memory activity by engaging colors and building the shapes with all one color. Then introduce shape forms with patterning or random colors. Once the child demonstrates succeeds with shape copying, encourage letter and number building using the lollipop sticks. This simple activity can be extended in so many ways to help work on visual memory!

Use dyed lollipop sticks to work on visual memory by copying and building shapes, forms, letters, numbers, and pictures. Visual Memory is an important skill needed for reading and writing.

We did a few shape copying activities as well. Little Sister had fun creating a neighborhood of houses using our colored lollipop sticks.

More Activities to help with Visual Memory Deficits:

Memory Games
games or Concentration games
I Spy games
and books
. Encourage the child to recall the items to be found using visual memory.
Form copying games, such as Pixy Cubes
Shape sequencing games, like Mental Blox
Place a tray of items in front of the child. Allow them 30 seconds to memorize all of the items. Cover the tray with a piece of paper. Ask the child to recall as many items as they can. Another version to this game is removing one or more items and asking the child to recall the missing items.

Looking for more vision activities? Try these:

Figure Ground | Spatial Relations | Hand-Eye Coordination | Visual Discrimination |

As always, use your best judgement with your kids. All activities that we document on this blog are supervised. The information on this website should not be used as medical advise. Please contact a therapist for an individualized evaluation if therapeutic advise is needed.

Christmas Pencil Control Activities for Kids DIY Workdsheets

November 19, 2019December 10, 2013 by Colleen Beck

We did a few Christmas Themed Pencil Control Activities with DIY worksheets this week.

This is so good for Little Guy (age 4) who needs a little practice with controlling the pencil when he’s writing letters. He’s only just begun writing his name, so this is the perfect age to improve pencil control as a preparation for more letter formation and line awareness as he starts to write on lines in coming months and years. New handwriters and kids who are not yet writing can do these easy (and fun) pencil control activities as a prep activity. And better yet, these pencil control activities are beginning homemade worksheets with a fun Christmas Theme!

Pencil Control Activities with a Christmas Theme

Little Guy loved this candy cane activity. I drew a quick candy cane on white paper with thin spaces on a diagonal. I had Little guy use a red marker to draw lines inside the thin stripes. We made a few of these candy canes because Little Guy wanted to keep going and make more!

{Note: This post contains affiliate links. In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post. Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected. As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}

For a new pencil user, encourage your child to draw the lines from right to left (**not like in this picture, oops!**) and the child should rest their arm on the table surface. Little Guy needs verbal and a physical cue to rest his hands on the table surface for better control. This will improve pencil control when the child is attempting to draw a line in a certain area.

He kept his lines within the stripes very nicely, and did not often go over the edges of the candy cane. This is a great activity for a new writer!

Our next activity was encouraging tripod grasp to manipulate pony beads. I had Little Guy pick up the beads and place them onto the bulbs of a Christmas Tree. You may have seen this picture on our Instagram feed or Facebook page.

Little Guy had to keep the beads on the circles and really concentrate on the lines. To manage the beads and place them gently on the circles, encouraged a tripod grasp with extended wrist for improved pencil control.

This Christmas tree was another easy DIY pencil control worksheet to throw together. Baby Girl (age 2) really liked this activity too.

I didn’t capture a picture of the next step, but I had Little Guy connect the bulbs with a pencil. I asked him to keep the pencil from going in the bulb, because it might break the light! Connecting the dots and concentrating on the lines of the circles was a great way to work on pencil control.

More DIY Christmas Pencil Control Worksheets for Kids

Our last pencil control activity was a present themed one. We started by making presents with some paper tubes shaped into a square. We used our Spill Proof Paint Cups
to hold the paint and stamped some squares.

We waited until the next day when our present squares were dry.

Baby Girl kind of took over this activity before Little Guy got a chance to practice his pencil control…

I showed Little Guy how to make crosses on the presents (over Baby Girl’s added decorations!) so he could practice simple copying. He was to make the lines top to bottom and left to right to encourage improved pencil control in letter formation. He did pretty well!

Thanksgiving Felt Board Patterns Direction Following Turkey

September 26, 2019November 26, 2013 by Colleen Beck

This Thanksgiving Felt Board activity was just the thing we needed one afternoon when Little Nephew was at our house. It was a super cold day and we were happy to stay inside warm and cozy playing and having fun with a few Thanksgiving activities! This felt board was super easy to put together. I have a big sheet of orange colored fleece fabric that we use for all kinds of activities and play. It makes the perfect fuzzy background for felt play, pretend play when we need to have an impromptu living room teddy bear picnic, and the perfect baby doll blanket!
This time we used our fleece to make an easel cover for our Felt Board Direction Following Turkey. We’ve been doing a lot of turkey crafts and activities leading up to Thanksgiving, and this one was even more fun for the littler ones. Baby Girl (age 2) and Little Nephew (age 2) both loved moving the felt pieces all over the board. And worked on fine motor skills and direction following and patterning at the same time!

Thanksgiving Felt Board Patterns, Direction Following, and Fine Motor Turkey by Sugar Aunts

Just a few supplies are needed for this activity. The Orange Fleece worked perfectly to hold the felt pieces of our turkey. The rest of the turkey was easy to make using Assorted felt pieces. A few brown circles, feathers of different colors, little turkey feet, a beak, and a wattle and our turkey was ready for creating!

I snipped a few little pieces of felt and glued them to the backs of Googley eyes. Then the googly eyes could stick to the fleece.

The fleece was perfect to throw over our Easel. The fleece stayed in place pretty well without sliding much. With the material up on an included surface, the kids were able to manipulate the pieces of the turkey while using an extended wrist. This positioning of their hand while managing small pieces prepares them for handwriting with a proper position of the wrist and fingers while holding a pencil.

I put one turkey together so the Toddlers could see where all of the pieces went. This task required visual scanning and direction following. We put our turkeys together with multi-step directions to add a little difficulty to the task.

Little Guy (age 4) worked on some patters with the feathers. We used an AB pattern for our turkey feathers.

Little Nephew is a smarty when it comes to identifying colors. He told us all of the colors of the feathers easily!

Working those little pieces was a great fine motor task for these guys!

They needed to use a pincer grasp to pinch the littlest pieces, all while maintaining that extended wrist.

We had such fun day with our Turkey patterns, direction following, and fine motor play. This would be an easy activity to put together in these last days before Thanksgiving!

Pencil Control Worksheets (You can make at home)

September 26, 2019February 27, 2013 by Colleen Beck

These are some easy handwriting exercises that can be done at home. Does your school-aged child have difficulty with line awareness, pencil control, or letter formation? Is your preschooler just learning to control the pencil while making strait lines or shapes?

It is easy to make fun worksheets that apply to your child’s needs/age-appropriate level/skills…and interests!

Pencil Control:

Use a highlighter to make strait, angled, and curvy lines…or add different twists and turns for your older child to trace along. For a new hand writer, thick lines are appropriate, and the school-aged child can work on very thin lines.

Ask the child to keep the pencil lines inside of the yellow guide. Fun stickers at the end of the lines always help 🙂

Graded Pencil Control Activity

This handwriting activity can be “graded” (adjusted to start out very easy for the child and then changed just slightly to make it more and more challenging). Grading an activity is helpful for the learner because it allows the child to feel success and gain confidence during a task, but also builds success with more difficult levels.

((I love Little Guy’s knight costume sleeve in this picture. He rocks the knight costume at lease once a day haha!))

Draw shapes with the highlighter with progressively thinner lines. This is a great pencil control exercise for shape formation and showing the child how to make sharp corners and curved lines. This is excellent pencil control work.

Pencil Control with Line Awareness

Start with a shape like, our square. Draw a square around it, taking turns with your child, making larger and larger shapes. It’s a lot like doodling you did in your notebooks or while talking on the phone, right?

Taking turns with your little handwriting student helps them to see an accurate shape right next to the lines that they are drawing…with sharp edges and strait lines.

Copying and Spatial Awareness

Big Sister LOVED doing this one. She filled out the whole sheet and had so much fun! She would roll the dice, count the dots, and draw the dots (in the correct arrangement) in the squares on the page.

Counting, Copying, and Drawing with accurate spacing all work on her visual perceptual skills and spatial awareness. These skills are essential for forming letters on lines, placing letters close enough to others in a word, and when copying lists of words.

Make early handwriting fun and your preschooler will have success…and love it!

By Audience

By Category

How to Write C in Cursive

Rainbow Writing Letter Formation Activity

What is Rainbow Writing

Rainbow Writing for handwriting legibility

Rainbow Writing Color Changing Activity

Map Skills Game for Building Spatial Concepts

Map Skills Game

Map Game for Building Spatial Concepts

Pre-Writing Lines Activity

Pre-Writing Lines Handwriting Precursor Activity

Developmental Progression of Pre-Writing Strokes

Easter Egg Pre-Writing Strokes Activity

More Pre-writing Lines Activities

More Easter activities:

Spring Fine Motor Kit

Teaching Kids to Write Their Name the Fun Way!

Teaching kids to write their name with sensory and movement:

Fun ways to work on Letter Formation:

Tripod Grasp Activities for Kids:

What is Visual Memory?

What is Visual Memory?

Visual Memory Shape Building Activity

More Activities to help with Visual Memory Deficits:

Looking for more vision activities? Try these:

Christmas Pencil Control Activities for Kids DIY Workdsheets

Pencil Control Activities with a Christmas Theme

More DIY Christmas Pencil Control Worksheets for Kids

Thanksgiving Felt Board Patterns Direction Following Turkey

Pencil Control Worksheets (You can make at home)

Pencil Control:

Graded Pencil Control Activity

Pencil Control with Line Awareness

Copying and Spatial Awareness

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