With over 17 years of experience working with nursery children as well as primary and secondary school children, one of the most common questions we are asked is “how do you teach nursery children to write?”
During these formative years, the most important focus must be on supporting good human development for pre-writing skills, mark-making and letter recognition before moving onto pencil grasp and letter writing. Rushing a child into formal writing at this young age may cause delayed development further down the line at primary school.
Developing pre-writing skills
Supporting young children to develop their gross and fine motor skills is essential whilst they are at nursery. A simple way of doing this is through play, providing the appropriate toys and fun activities that encourage motor integration through movement of hands, fingers and wrists.
Introducing different materials to play with helps to keep young children engaged and add variety to their play such as Play-Doh, sand and water. Activities that involve arts and crafts, sticking, and cutting out are perfect for developing and building the muscles needed for handwriting.
Letter recognition
Spending time with children to help them recognise the letters of the alphabet in their handwriting families is another fundamental skill for handwriting. Tracing letters with a finger is a really simple method to help young children learn early letter shape. This was the inspiration behind our Alphabet Manual, which supports both the recognition and direction of each letter in preparation for handwriting.
How can Morrells Handwriting help nurseries?
We provide a bespoke training course to cover everything you need to know about supporting good human development and to help your staff understand why everyday pre-writing activities are such an important factor for developing handwriting skills.
Most importantly, our training will provide your nursery staff with the knowledge on how to prevent the most common causes of poor pencil grasp and incorrect letter direction.
Resources for your nursery school
Our Alphabet Manual is perfect for your nursery school. The correct starting point and direction of each letter is indicated and the letters are grouped into their handwriting families, making it easier for teaching and learning how to write.
Purchase our bespoke handwriting training and innovative resources for your nursery school to help your staff encourage young writers to develop handwriting skills that will last a lifetime.
Are you ready for the new handwriting curriculum?