EYFS

These are vital skills to master before a child moves on to learn to write.

Encourage your child to be active throughout the day. Lying on their stomachs to read stories together, running up and down hills and climbing over play equipment.

Practise forming large movements using ribbons and streamers with your child. Can they use their arms to draw a large circle or form some of the codes (letters) within their name in the air? This builds their muscle strength.

Practise getting dressed independently, with your child pulling their clothes on and off and strengthening their muscles as they do so.

Explore balance bikes, scooters and bikes to develop your child's awareness of balance and the need to negotiate spaces safely.

At LPPA we have daily dough disco sessions across our EYFS phase. These develop the strength, dexterity and muscle tone in your child's fingers to support writing.

Please click on this link to our play-dough recipe if you would like to have a go at home. Here is also a clip for the main movements we use during our sessions.

To support the children's fine motor development we also have cutting skills in our provision, which we support the children with daily. Children start by making snips into paper using loop scissors and then gradually cutting to along a line to a point and then around shapes. Please see below some photos of possible scissors that you could use at home to support this key developmental skill.

Within the EYFS we also have daily handwriting sessions. These start with pre-writing shapes in nursery, such as circles, lines and crosses and then move onto codes (letters) as the year progresses and the children move into Reception. To support the children with forming their codes we have rhymes. For example, for an "a" we say "around the apple and down the leaf". This helps the children to remember the formation, so please do practise these at home. Please see a link here.