Prewriting Skills: Supporting Handwriting in the Young Child

As an Occupational Therapist, I am often prompted with questions regarding handwriting. When should a child be expected to be successful with handwriting, and when might a child benefit from some extra support? Handwriting is a complex skill and has multiple prerequisites before a child can be successful. 

Some of these prerequisite skills include:

-       Trunk and shoulder strength

-       Muscle development within the hand

-       Eye-hand coordination

-       Left-right discrimination and body awareness

-       Visual perceptual skills, including visual memory, visual discrimination, visual closure, figure-ground

-       Ability to form smooth prewriting strokes (vertical & horizontal lines, diagonal lines, circles, cross, square, triangle)

In the preschool years, it is important to build these prerequisite skills before we focus on specifically teaching handwriting and letter formation. With a solid foundation, our kids will transition seamlessly into letter formation at an age-appropriate level! Such skills are built through sensorimotor play and environmental exploration. See below for examples of gross and fine motor play that will support your child’s handwriting development:

1. Playground and obstacle course negotiation: The playground offers a multitude of opportunities for building core strength, gross motor skills, motor planning skills, and bilateral coordination. Encourage your child to explore the playground including climbing up and over obstacles, hanging from the monkey bars, balancing on balance beams, climbing through tunnels, and even climbing up the slide!

2. Play with resistive play doh or putty: This sensory activity provides resistive work to the fine motor muscles of our hands! Encourage your child to roll out the doh with a rolling pin or with their hands to create long snakes or balls, push into the doh with shape cutters, and pinch. Coins and beads can also be hidden into resistive putty for your child to dig through for added fine motor strengthening.

3. Water and/or sensory bin play: Provide your child with scoops and cups to explore water or sensory bins (or simply incorporate into bath time!). Scooping and pouring will work their ability to supinate and pronate their hands while promoting stability through the shoulder and wrist, essential skills for advanced handwriting grips. Pouring back and forth between two hands is also an excellent activity to promote bilateral coordination.

4. Animal walks: Encourage your child to walk like a bear, slither/crawl like a snake, or walk like a crab! These are fun ways to promote core strengthening, strengthening through the shoulders, bilateral coordination, and motor planning.

5. Simon Says: Play games such as Simon Says or this Monkey Around game. These work on skills such as body awareness, left/right discrimination, and overall motor planning.

6. Eye Spy: Eye spy is an excellent game to facilitate visual search and visual perceptual skills and can be performed anywhere! This is a go-to for our family while waiting at a doctor’s office or for food at a restaurant. You can begin playing this game even at a young age by providing more details and decreasing the search space (for example, locating something on the table rather than searching the entire room).

7. Free Drawing: Free drawing provides your child with ample opportunities to practice prewriting strokes and lines without the pressure of letter formation. Try providing your child with a drawing prompt (draw your family!) or just let them create from their own imagination! 

*When a child has difficulty with age-appropriate shape, letter, or number formation, there may be challenges with one or many of these prerequisite skills. A skilled occupational therapist can be the detective and decipher which of these skills could benefit from additional support. Reach out to Tiny Transformations to schedule an evaluation with one of our skilled therapists if you have concerns regarding your child’s writing skills. 

*Milestone age reference: Schneck, C. M. & Amundson, S. J. (2010). Prewriting and handwriting skills. In J. Case-Smight & J. C. - O’Brien (Eds.), Occupational Therapy for Children, 6th Edition (pp. 555-580). Mosby Elsevier.