Teaching letter formation doesn’t need to be boring. Teach kids how to write letters by beginning with letters that have straight lines (horizontal and vertical lines) to make it developmentally appropriate. Today, I’ve got a free virtual therapy slide deck to teach straight line letters in occupational therapy virtual sessions. Help kids work on letter formation of straight line letters using whole-body gross motor activities and motor planning concepts. Straight line letters are those letters that contain horizontal and vertical lines: (E, F, H, I, L, T) and are great letters to begin wiht when teaching handwriting.
This free slide deck offers movement based, gross motor activities to work on writing straight line letters.
Teaching kids to write letters helps when you begin with developmentally appropriate letters, based on straight lines. These easy tips for teaching handwriting explains more on that concept of starting by teaching upper case letters first (though the concept of lowercase letters can be taught from the beginning as well.
By helping kids understand that letters are “built” from lines and curves, they can get a better visual picture in their mind. Building letters is one way to work on these concepts.
In this particular slide deck, you’ll see that we are really working on the motor plan of letters. This whole-body lesson helps kids to gain motor skills such as crossing midline, coordination, core strength, and balance, as well as motor planning skills. Check out this post for more information on motor planning and handwriting. The impact of motor planning on writing skills is pretty huge!
Here are more motor planning resources and tools found on The OT Toolbox. Add some of these ideas to your virtual therapy sessions, too.
Looking for more tools to use in teaching letter formation? Try these ideas:
Free Letter Formation Slide Deck– This is another slide deck that has a scribble theme to work on letter formation. Kids won’t be scribbling those letters, though! They will be working on fine motor skills, visual perception, gross motor, and more…all needed to write letters clearly!
Lowercase Letter Formation Activities
10 Ways to Teach Letter Formation
Fine Motor Alphabet and Play Dough
Magnetic Alphabet and Spoons Game
