Just like a children need to learn to walk before they run, it is important for your children to master pre-writing skills before they get started on their writing journey. 

Pre-writing skills are the fundamental fine motor skills that children need to develop before they begin to write. This helps children in building their finger strength, eye hand coordination, wrist movement and grip strength. Pre-writing skills contribute to the child’s ability to hold and use a pencil, the ability to draw, write, copy and colour. 

In simple words, pre-writing skills generally refer to the lines and stroke patterns that children need to master before they learn how to write.

Significance Of Pre-writing 

Whenever you go to the gym you always start with warm up or stretching exercises before you start your workout so that your body doesn’t feel exhausted mentally and physically too fast. 

Similarly, pre-writing skills are like warm up activities to gradually prepare your child to write. If you skip this step, the child’s fingers will feel unsteady, they will not be able to grip a writing tool for too long Their writing will not be clear and most importantly, they will feel very frustrated. Writing will feel like a chore and not as a means to express themselves. 

The developmentally appropriate way of introducing writing to preschoolers is to start with pre-writing activities like finger gym which is introduced at the very start of Prenursery at Niño & Niña. 

Finger gym includes activities that are designed to work out the smaller muscles and fine motor skills in the childs hands and fingers. They work in the exact same way that an actual gym helps us to exercise our larger muscles and gross motor skills. 

Practice makes perfect, that’s the real mantra !  

Our Prenursery Niño & Niña are about to begin their Pre-writing journey. In order to help them make this journey a fun ride, we are sharing some fun finger gym exercises that can be done at home. 

1. Tear & Paste-  All you require is some old newspaper and a glue stick. Let you child tear the paper and then apply glue on it to paste it. It’s simply magical ! 

2. Tweezer Twist- Let the children pick up objects like rajma or chole using a tweezer. This develops finger strength to grip objects. It’s extremely important for holding a pencil. 

3. Clothespin Magic- Allow the children to open a clothespin and place it on the circumference of a plate. Ask them to apply pressure to open it in order to remove it. 

4. Stacking Vessels- Let your child stack small steel or plastic bowls one on top of an other. 

5. Dough Fun- Give the child playdough and ask him/her to roll it, stretch it, cut it and simple explore the million possibilities of molding it. 

6. Lemon Squeezing- Let the child squeeze lemons to understand the concept of applying pressure on an object. It helps form the correct impression on paper with a pencil. 

It is absolutely alright if your child needs more time with a certain prewriting milestone. Every child is unique and they develop at their own pace. Please give your children enough time and encouragement to cross these milestones. We at Niño & Niña Preschool give our little ones almost half a year to explore & master these pre-writing skills. 

Now that you know everything about pre-writing skills, it’s your turn to start implementing them at home as well. Please be our partners in making the pre-writing journey a cherished one for our Champs! 

If you found this blog interesting and informative or have some other tips and tricks, please do leave your comments below!

– Divya Joshi & Nishchal Arora