After switching the Little Mr.'s reading activities to his bedtime reading, I thought that learning to write would be a good next skill to learn: he was lacking confidence in his writing ability, and it would be easy to fit in a 5-minute writing activity during the day to replace his reading activity. Here are the 5-minute activities that I used to teach my toddler how to write:
Activity 1: Introducing how to write each letter
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE REACHED: Can hold a pencil with enough control of their fingers and wrist to write letters
DURATION: 2-5 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
This Mr. Pencil's Scribble & Write toy was a great introduction to writing because it teaches the child the correct way to write each letter, and a general movement by the child in the right direction leads to the letter being drawn. Because the child sees results immediately after they move the pencil in the right general direction, they are motivated to continue. When I initially tried to teach him how to write using just a pencil directly on paper, his writing resulted in such a wobbly line that didn't really resemble the letter he was trying to write, so he wasn't really motivated to write as he didn't have enough control to draw the letters he wanted. Another thing I really liked about Mr. Pencil's Scribble & Write was that it also had easy spelling games that the Little Mr. could do already as he could read. The only downside to this toy was that the pencil is really big, making it a little difficult for little hands to hold it properly. So I focused on the wrist movements to write each letter for this activity, and focused on holding pencils in the next activity using these pencil grips.
For my oldest son, I didn't use this first step as an activity, my 3.5-year-old son just played with it as a toy on his own time. I helped him learn how to draw the more difficult upper and lower case letters when he first got Mr. Pencil, but when he got this toy at 3.5 years, for the most part he was able to watch Mr. Pencil draw the letters and then draw the letters himself on a semi-consistent basis very quickly.
Mr. Pencil Scribble & Write as a 5-minute activity
I plan to use what I know now to make Mr. Pencil into a 5-minute writing activity for my youngest. Before I commit to doing Mr. Pencil every day as a 5-minute activity though, I would watch him draw in his notebook just to see where he is developmentally. Does he have enough control of his wrist yet to write letters? Turned out he purposefully wrote a capital "A" lightly on his notebook by himself, similarly to how he purposefully wrote this N at 2 years and 9 months:
After that, I started the following progression of 5-minute Mr. Pencil writing activities:
Draw the upper case letter three times (more times if he's still interested). If he's confident already with the first letter you try, feel free to have him do other letters of a similar difficulty level (see the list below for letters grouped by difficulty level).
Do that for about three days (three 5-minute sessions).
Move onto the next upper case letter/difficulty level and have him/help him draw it 3 times. Do this for about 3 days.
Continue doing so for each letter. If writing is relatively easy for him, try to introduce 2-3 new letters every 3 days if he can write all 2-3 letters each 3 times within about 5 minutes.
Have some review sessions every 5-ish letters to help him remember how to write the letters he's already learned.
Move onto lower case letters once he's mastered upper case letters, then numbers.
Some letters are easier for beginners to write than others. For example, "A" was much easier for Copycat than "B", so instead of teaching them in order of the alphabet, I chose to teach the Copycat how to write his letters in order of difficulty:
Upper case letters in order of difficulty:
1st Difficulty level: 1 stroke straight lines
A, E, F, H, I, T, X
2nd Difficulty level: 2 stroke straight lines
L, Y, K, V, N
3rd Difficulty level: 1 curved line
C, D, J, O, P, Q, U
4th Difficulty level: 1 curved line and a stroke
G, R
5th Difficulty level: 3-4 stroke straight lines
M, Z, W
6th Difficulty level: 2 curved lines
B, S
I'll be updating this post as I go along, adjusting the difficulty levels of the letters as needed, and adding difficulty levels for the lower case letters and numbers once I get to doing those activities with Copycat to reflect what worked for him and what didn't!
Once the Little Mr. could consistently write the letters using Mr. Pencil with minimal mistakes or difficulty, it was a sign to me that he was familiar enough with how to draw each letter. I actively started the next writing activity because the Little Mr. knew the general movements to write a letter, but still couldn't write a decent looking letter with a pencil on actual paper. So once your child masters Mr. Pencil, shift your focus to writing on actual paper because he won't progress much further in his writing if Mr. Pencil is doing all the actual writing for him.
Activity 2: Tracing letters and numbers on paper
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE REACHED: Knows the general wrist movements to write each letter
DURATION: 4-6 minutes
MATERIALS NEEDED:
Paper with dotted letters printed/written on it (or re-usable whiteboard version)
Pencil
Now that they know how to write each letter, it's time for your child to practice that with an actual pencil/pen and paper so that they can learn finer control and write clean rather than wobbly letters. In the case of the Little Mr., his lack of confidence in his own writing is what motivated me to add writing in as an activity to practice a little every day. I got these pencil grips to help my son hold pencils properly - he had a tough time holding thicker whiteboard markers properly when he was just starting to write, so I started him learning with a pencil.
Practicing writing on actual paper
Then for this activity, all I did was give him dotted numbers and letters to trace. I alternated between upper case letters and lower case letters. There are several ways you can do this:
Draw the dotted numbers and letters yourself for him to trace
Print out several copies of dotted letters for them to trace
I actually gave him his dotted letters to do by himself at quiet time, and our rule was he needed to finish one sheet before he could play with his special quiet time toys, and he'd show me his completed sheet after quiet time. So this was technically an activity that he did by himself: I didn't require perfect letters - the purpose of this activity was just to get him practicing his hand movements for writing each day.
Here is what one sheet of upper case letters looked like for one day, and one sheet of lower case letters for the next day (our printer was broken and the pandemic was in full swing, so I just spent about 5 minutes a week to create about a weeks worth of sheets for the Little Mr.'s writing activity).
Activity 3: Writing letters and numbers without using dotted lines
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE REACHED: Can write semi-decent (somewhat recognizable) looking letters using dotted lines
DURATION: 4-6 minutes
MATERIALS NEEDED:
Paper with each letter written to the left of a blank space
Pencil
Optional: reusable dotted letters/numbers for whiteboard markers
3a) Option 1: Writing on paper
Even before he had mastered drawing each letter using the dotted lines, I was also having him try to write the letters by themselves without using dots by adding a blank line next to each letter in his tracing sheets.
Have them write each letter in the blank next to each letter. I had an upper case and lower case version, and switched which one he did every day. As you can see from this example, I wasn't requiring perfect letters, I just wanted to get him practicing.
*Originally I had him doing both the dotted letters and writing the letters without the dotted lines, but not only was it taking him too long to finish, he also didn't have a good letter to copy when trying to write by himself so I switched it to having him just try and copy my letters without needing to trace the dotted letters first).
3b) Option 2: Writing on a reusable board/mat
After using the handwritten sheets above for a couple weeks, we were gifted these reusable mats, which we started to use with whiteboard markers instead.
The downside to using whiteboard markers is that the pencil holder helpers didn't fit, but by this point the Little Mr. had used the pencil helpers with an actual pencil enough that he already could hold a whiteboard marker well enough without the pencil grips. The Little Mr. was getting practice writing his numbers during his Inchimals Math activity, so we just focused on letters for this activity.
REPETITIONS: He completed one reusable sheet under my supervision as his afternoon 5-minute activity (to prevent pen marks where they shouldn't be without my supervision), and also so we could start practicing drawing letters on and within lines. First we only did upper case letters* and worked on drawing the letters between the top and bottom solid lines. Only once he mastered the drawing the upper case letters with their tops touching the top solid line and their bottoms touching the bottom solid line, we switched to working on the lower case letters. The new top of the letter became the middle dotted line, and only some letters hung below the bottom solid line.
Once the Copycat is old enough for these writing activities, I think I'll skip 3a) and just move straight to using these reusable versions in 3b) once he's practiced enough with a pencil that he can hold a whiteboard marker without help.
* When working on his upper case letters for his afternoon 5-minute activity, we started spelling as one of his morning 5-minute activities. During this spelling activity, he would spell 3 words and then write those 3 words too.
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