Letter Formation

Targeted skills: grasp, letter formation

Materials: broken wax crayons (1 inch long), rainbow writing tem plates (download or purchase through Teachers Pay Teachers or create yourself)

Description: Children use a tripod grasp on a broken crayons to practice and develop a motor plan for how to form the letter correctly/efficiently through repetition of the strokes. The templates should include dots for where to start, and possibly numbers and arrows indicating separate lines and directionality.

Verbal cues:  “pinch the crayon”; “hold the paper with your helper hand”; “start at the top/green dot”; “draw the lines (1, 2, 3, etc.)”; “use 10 different colours”

Alternatives: You can progressively downsize the size of the letters once accuracy improves, until you can fit their whole name in letter outlines on one page. To save paper, you can laminate templates and use washable markers or dry-erase crayons.

Targeted skills: letter formation, bilateral hand coordination

Materials: Laminated Play-Doh mats for individual letters or whole names (find on-line or create yourself), Play-Doh or Wikki Stix

Description: Children roll out logs of Play-Doh, divide into separate “lines”, and place on the letter outlines on the Play-Doh mat to form the letters using separate “lines”.

Verbal cues: “use two hands”; roll the play-doh into logs/lines/snakes”; “how many lines does letter ____ have?”; use consistent terminology, e.g.  “big/little line, big/little curve”

Alternatives: You can eventually remove the template, or down size it so they use it as a reference for letter formation but not a mat. You can also do this with Wikki Stix (find a cheaper version of bendable wax st icks at Michael’s for $20/500). 

Targeted skills: name recognition, spelling, visual perception (figure-ground discrimination)

Materials: cookie sheet or magnetic surface, magnetic letters, name template (large font)

Description: Children find and place their name template on the cookie sheet. Next, children either reorganize magnetic letters to match them to the template (on top) or reorganize the magnetic letters to match them below the template.

Verbal cues: “match the letters”, “spell your name”

Alternatives:  Add in figure-ground discrimination by having children search and find magnetic letters from a pile to match. Add challenge by having a child form his/her name from memory (with or without practicing with the template first). The same can be done with a variety of materials. The goal is not printing, but rather name recognition and spelling. Try blocks with letters, scrabble tiles, or letter stamps

Targeted skills: Letter formation, spelling name

Materials: Name template, pencil or washable fine tip marker (if laminated)

Description: Children learn how to form the letters of their name through repetition of efficient strokes. Children follow a tracing pattern on top of fading highlights for the first two rows, with green starting dots and perhaps numbers and arrows to indicate line sequence and directionality. On the last row, children print their names without tracing.

Verbal cues:  “pinch the pencil”; “hold the paper with your helper hand”; “start at the top/green dot”; “draw the lines in order (1, 2, 3, etc.)”

Remember: Tracing has its limitations. Children must be forming the letters efficiently and the same way each time in order to develop a motor plan for printing the letter. A motor plan is what helps children remember how to print a letter from memory.