Tips on Getting 3 Yo to Initiate Copying to Write Letters, Tc.

A chalkboard and nice, fat chalk are great!
Also fun to do: writing letters in pudding or shaving cream on the kitchen table.

My son LOVES drawing with bathtub crayons. They will entertain him until I have to beg him to get out of the cold bathtub water. He is only 2 and not writing letters yet but he draws well and holds his crayons perfectly :)

My daughter's preschool uses a program called Handwriting Without Tears - it basically breaks the letters down into big lines, little lines, little curves, etc. Maybe you could Google it and see what you find for suggestions.

HI MS,
Encouraging him to exercise fine motor skills will help him with writing also. If he's interested in tracing number and letters, great, but if not, I'd concentrate on having him do things like painting with brushes, coloring with crayons, playdough... All of those things strengthen fingers and hands and will help with his writing skills either in preschool or kindergarten.

Our school uses Handwriting Without Tears and it's a great program!

Good luck!

1. Let him smear some shaving cream either on the shower door or on the side of the bath as he is taking a bath and let him use his fingers to trace letters in it.

2. Put some ketchup or mustard in a ziploc bag, seal it, and let him trace letters in that using his fingers as well.

3. Check out learning websites like www.starfall.com and www.pbskids.com, for fun games that he can play.

4. There are a number of other websites that have free printables for kids and also learning activities. Can't think of any off the top of my head but they are easy to find.

5. Start with straight line letters first (l, i, t). Once he has mastered that, move onto curved line letters like b, d, c and s. Once he has mastered that, move on to slanted line letters like x and z. From what I understand, this is how handwriting skills naturally develop.

You can do really fun things with him such as having him write the letters out on shaving cream (you can spray on a cookie sheet or window). Also I take some rice and spread it on a cookie sheet and have my daughter practice on that. Bathtub crayons are also great...Basically, just have fun with it everywhere - this is true for anything else you want him to learn as well. Expose him to it wherever possible. Show him how his name is written and show him his name on Christmas cards, etc. so he sees the importance of writing your name and writing in general. My daughter loves to trace, so you can get him a workbook (dollar store has them) that has tracing of the alphabet. I hope these suggestions work for you. Take care.

Small motor control (finger muscles) happens over a long period of time.
You build this by having him do activities which help those muscles develop. Finger painting, playing with play dough, lacing beads/cards, coloring, cutting shapes with safety scissors from construction paper, - all these activities prepare his hands for holding pencils and writing a few years down the line.

I did not read the other posts. I teach Kindergarten and that's when we usually begin teaching correct stroke. Some things you can do now would be: practice making a circle motion and begin some of the letters of his name in shaving cream, take cooked spaghetti noodles and let him form the letters in his name, practice making a letters over a mild sandpaper or another rough texture. Kids are tactile learners and these are all fun ways to introduce handwriting without paper/pencil. Bathtub crayons are fun too! If you want him to copy I would write his name with a yellow marker and have him trace it. Don't used line paper yet and don't concern yourself with how big he writes.

Chalk, paint, crayons on big pieces of paper. My daughters favorite was the doodle pad. She learned to write her name on the doodle pad before her third bday. Now my 2 1/2 yr old son doesnt want anything to do with learning to write yet but loves drawing his shapes on the doodle pad and the giant coloring books.

I've seen some tracing pages where they start with simple shapes like circles and waves so that it's fun and builds skills for future writing. You could draw a dotted line, and then have him follow your dots with another color of marker.

Something we did is print out letter activity sheets from starfall.com

at preschool they have the childs name in dots and the child follows the dots.. but I would wait till the child shows interest.

my son learned his letters at 2 because he was interested.. my daughter was 4 before she learned her letters..s he didnt care about letters.. she liked playing pretend.

I think you've got some great ideas here. My son is 3 and not really interested in writing yet, but I bought him the chalkboard/whiteboard easel from Ikea ($15! Score!) and let him practice "drawing" on that. We also do a letter of the day on it-- right now, he's kinda past the letter recognition part, but not really to the letter-copying part.

The other thing I have for him is a laminated placemat with all the letters on the back of it that you can use the wet-erase (like from the old overhead projectors-- showing my age!) markers on. The kids can trace the letters (there is a numbers one too) and then you can erase with a wet paper towel. The brand I have is Painless Learning Systems, and sometimes you see them on the endcaps at the grocery store.

To get him interested in something, make it fun & make it interesting. Don't force it because he will come to it on his own time. Some things will take longer than they are "supposed" to take, but if you can learn to trust your son and that he is doing what he is ready for, he will show you that he will get there and regain any ground that was temporarily "lost".

I focus on making learning fun, interesting and exciting. The rest takes care of itself. I want a love of learning way more than an advanced skill set. Learning is lifelong.

We started doing letters and numbers with my 2-1/2yo son just to add something to our days, especially since we're inside more with the winter cold. I bought a magnet desk with letters/numbers at consignment for $4.50 over the summer and he just recently started taking an interest. I bought a box of 101 cookie cutters from Target (to get him to help with food prepping, hoping to get him to eat more), which includes letters & numbers, and he loves to use them in his toast, potatoe pancakes and other foods.

Since doing these things, he's been adding letters and numbers to his drawings. I can't make out the drawings, but he'll scribble something and tell me he drew a dumptruck, or a number 6, etc. He likes to draw items/letters/numbers in the dirt, rocks and snow.

So, maybe some of those things will help get him started or interested. My son wanted nothing to do with coloring, drawing, painting, etc for the longest time. His friends would sit and be creative, while he built and destroyed things (being creative in his way). Then just this past month, he's really been into drawing/creating - its probably just his time, but I'm glad I have those things on hand to capitalize on it! Good luck!

Target had some dry erase placemats (in the dollar section) that I got for my daughter that had numbers and letters to trace. When she went to preschool in the fall, I was worried about her not being able to wirte her name or whatever. But, when I spoke with the teacher, she actually said it was a good thing that she can't really write anything yet. They prefer them not too know too much. But, the dry erase tracing thing was some good practing for introducing it.