Preschool Writing:
Scribble Every Day
Today's Snack: What food should you eat every single
day? Well you, know what they say: an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apple
slices are a yummy snack, and a glass of apple juice just doubles the delight.
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Supplies:
Scratch paper,
coloring books, shelf paper, sidewalk chalk
Crayons, No. 2
pencils, markers, chalk
Set
your child up to be a good, strong writer in a way that has very little to do
with spelling and vocabulary: every day, make sure your preschool child
scribbles! You can put a star on the calendar for every daily, 10-minute
scribbling session, and watch your child's mastery and enjoyment build.
It
seems like kid stuff, but scribbling does a lot to build your child's fine-motor
skills. Those will come in handy, bigtime, as your child begins to write words,
sentences, paragraphs, and whole papers, in the very near future.
Scribbling
and coloring help with eye-hand coordination, to make the line go where the
brain wants it to. They help with variety, too, as a child learn how to make
different kinds of marks on paper or, if you're using chalk, on pavement.
It's
great fun to try different widths of writing utensils - a skinny pencil feels
so much different than a chubby marker - and to try varying your pencil
pressures, colors, writing surfaces, and so on.
Every
minute that a child scribbles or colors is a minute of muscle-strengthening in
the child's hands and arms, too. That will really help with writing fluency
later on. A child who has put in a lot of time scribbling and coloring will be
able to write longer sentences and paragraphs without getting fatigued.
Best
of all, scribbling helps build a child's imagination. It is so much fun to have
a child hold up a creation, and have you guess what it is! Don't think it's
pointless and silly - it's important to praise your child for every effort, and
tape them up on your refrigerator. You want your child to have that feeling of
success, that something he or she created out of thin air is something that
others will like!
Scribbling
and coloring may look like pointless fun - but they really are serious business
for your child's writing future.
