Teaching preschool students how to write is a complex task. Teachers can expect plenty of hurdles dealing with kids.
Repetitive bathroom breaks and bursting out with tears are a few of the many hurdles teachers face daily.
Teachers must tactfully socialize with kids and make them adjust to the classroom environment.
To do so, you must have a few tricks up your sleeves and a profound knowledge of how to teach kids to write.
What Makes Teaching Preschoolers Easier And More Effective?
● Set the room strategically
● Observe the kids
● Let them express emotions
● Make a schedule for them
● Connect with the parents
● Ask questions that stimulate them
● Set time for dialogic and interactive reading
● Evaluate regularly
How to Teach Kids To Write: Best Tips for It
Learning how to write is one of the toughest jobs for a kid.
Why?
Because writing requires three processes to master:-
1. Children need to acknowledge writing as a way of communication.
2. Getting accustomed to the involved technicalities, such as, learning how to form letters, developing motor skills to write, and understanding how writing runs and why putting spaces between two words are important.
3. Concentrating their thoughts on writing.
Some students are eager to master the art of writing, while others aren’t. Drawing or forming letter-like markings are the most common ways youngsters learn to write.
In this way, they slowly attain a grip on writing letters perfectly. Children often use phonetics to write according to how they sound.
5 Ways of Teaching Writing to Toddlers
1. Printed Reading Materials
Encourage kids to read books every day and take them to the public library whenever there is a scope.
Habituate reading newspapers, magazines, and books together with your kid. It helps them to get accustomed to letters and numbers faster.
2. Playing With Manipulative Toys
Your little ones face difficulty acquiring visual, grasping, and coordination skills required to write letters.
Playing with manipulatives Toys helps them gain those skills faster and easier.
A few examples of manipulative toys are Duplos, play-doh, puzzles, dolls with self-customizable clothes, kinetic sands, and Playmobil rescue vehicles.
These open-ended toys help children to improve their hand-eye coordination which helps them to acquire the strength to write.
3. Introducing Them To Writing Tools
Kids learning to write are often caught scribbling on papers, painting on walls, and marking whatever they find. Let them explore on their own.
Provide them crayons, chalks, paintbrushes, Magna Doodle boards, pages to paint, and whatever possible tools they can write with. This encourages creativity within children and independent learning.
4. Active Play
Writing requires motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Outside activities such as pulling, climbing, and jumping develop their senses and strengthen their skills required for performing writing tasks.
Indoor games such as legos and other building toys can improve their skills too. As an alternative, you may have your child create something out of cardboard or paint something with chalk.
5. Finding The Kid’s Interest
You’ll often encounter kids who can recognize letters at the age of 2 and show interest in letters and numbers. But that might not be the case for every child and that’s completely normal.
Many kids do not pay attention to letters and numbers till they reach 4 or 5. So, whatever they scribble works fine.
Effective Tips On How to Teach Writing Skills to Kindergarten
Before moving forward, the most important tip one must remember is to be patient with kids.
Kids always overflow with energy and their minds are always excited about exploring new things. Here are a few of the best ways to teach kids to write:
1. Consistent Practice
Make the kid practice writing every day. The only way to master a skill is to do it daily, even if it only means scribbling on pages.
2. Word Sighting
Before writing, a kid must have the efficiency to read and spell words. Teachers often try singing one-word at-a-time to the students.
3. Teaching To Form Letters
Kids need to know how to form letters and the best way to do so is to learn while writing a sentence.
4. Mini-lessons
Preschool writing activities include teaching small skills at a time as kindergarteners have very short attention periods.
5. Encourage Spelling Inventions
Instead of constantly correcting your kid, let them write whatever they hear. The teachers need to be intelligent to understand the simple sentences their small creative minds created.
6. Choose Relevant Topics
Ask them to write the things they love. If they like to choose the same topic repetitively, that is fine.
7. Writing Their Favorite Subject
Motivate kids to write their favorite section of a story or make up a letter to an imaginary friend.
8. Be Patient With Punctuation
Punctuations are hard to master because for a kid grasping the concept of complete thought is alien.
How To Make Children Write Journals?
The first step in teaching children to write journals is to acquire the right materials.
● Journals: Parents can make journals with a bunch of white paper.
It makes them free to write or scribble anywhere on the page without restrictions which kids often like. You can also print suitable journals with attractive covers.
● Writing tools: Different age groups have distinct tools to write. Some prefer crayons or pencils while others prefer crayons or markers to express themselves.
What Should Preschoolers Write In Journals?
After learning to write letters in Noida Preschool students need a fun and creative space to experiment with their words. Writing Journal is a habit and not a daily chore, hence, kids must enjoy what they are doing.
You can find many kids who have plenty of topics in their minds to write about, whereas others are more comfortable with writing prompts. Here are some ideas for writing prompts:
● You can use Magazine pictures for triggering creativity in your kid.
● Use conversation cards.
Teaching Numbers to Kids
A straightforward approach to teaching a kid fails most of the time. Hence, finding fun and innovative ways to teach them is the real challenge for both teachers and parents.
The ideal age to introduce numbers to kids is after they turn one. Number rhymes work great as a starter.
Few tips that may help you teach better:
● Use number rhymes to count
● Give them tasks that need number incorporation
● Number Games
● Ask them to draw quantity from written numbers
● Use connect the dots to teach number sequence
● Fingers and toes counting
● Using flashcards
Children are very sharp. They pick up things very quickly if taught properly. Fun interactive ways of learning always entice them to learn better.
Teaching The Concept of Time to Preschoolers
Making a preschooler understand the concept of time is no easy task. Why?
Time is an abstract concept that requires real-life experience to understand.
Thus, to start understanding time they need to develop the passing time concept.
Here are a few ways guardians can follow:-
1. Build their foundation of basic maths skills in Preschool. It is difficult for kids to understand the concept of time. So, make it a fun game for them to experience.
2. Design a daily schedule for your kid. This will help them to sense the flow of time.
3. Make a set of cards with images of the normal day’s events on them, and have the kids sequence them in the order they occur. You can either draw these cards on your own or can download them from online stores.
4. Teachers should point out the clock every hour and announce the time in the class. Then, mention the routine poster to find their next task.
5. Using a countdown timer is a fine idea to illustrate a particular time length.
6. Introduce time vocabulary in contexts. Frequent use of vocabulary such as half an hour, tomorrow, yesterday, and 5 minutes is required to teach them time.
7. Show them two different clock formats. One is analog which requires reading clock hands, and another is digital which shows time in numbers.
Few Cool Ways to Teach Patterns to Preschoolers
If things are arranged and repeated in a logical way it creates a pattern. One can create such patterns using colors, shapes, images, sounds, gestures, and numbers.
Kids have a natural inclination towards maths. This is why you will find kids drawn toward music, shapes, and colors.
Learning to read patterns enhances predictability, capability to understand the next step, logical linkages, and reasoning within youngsters.
Here are a few pre-writing patterns for preschoolers that one can implement in their daily life:
1. Color Patterns
Your toddler likely enjoys seeing and creating new color patterns. It is possible to create color patterns like red-red-blue-yellow using Legos and colored bricks.
If your youngster enjoys coloring rainbows, teach him or her how to follow the color sequence.
2. Move with the groove patterns
When you count up to five and ask a kid to jump, it creates a pattern. You can choreograph such small movement patterns to make them groove with numbers.
3. Create A Pattern With Food
You can create interesting food patterns. Put three mushrooms and five pepperoni in each pizza slice which will create a pattern.
You may also ask your kid to create decorative patterns by using chocolate chips and slices of banana.
4. Tick-Tock Patterns
Make them understand the pattern of time by giving them small tasks that they need to complete within a particular period.
Set up a schedule for your kid: 20 minutes studying, 20 minutes playing.
5. Music Rhythm Patterns
From an early age, music, and arithmetic are linked in our minds. Help your kid identify music patterns as it connects to a kid’s mathematical skills and spatial awareness.
Teaching patterns using music increases a child’s cognitive ability.
Conclusion
All the above-mentioned ways have proven to be fruitful in teaching students the basic foundation of writing.
It is tough to gain a preschooler’s attention while you are teaching. Teachers need to find innovative teaching techniques that will entice children’s playful minds.
Active play is important for gaining motor skills to write letters and the strength required to control writing tools.
Creative fun ways of teaching help students to learn effortlessly. Teaching students in a real-life context helps them to develop their senses quickly and efficiently.
Doing repetitive practice and writing journals is the most effective way to learn from sentences using words they learn.
Bhawna Bhatia
I am Bhawna Bhatia and I am a passionate and hardworking teacher.Having an experience of 16 years, I believe in teaching from my heart and being a leader to my students. I want to show them that teaching them brings me joy and happiness to my role. Being able to be the leader they look up to, who believes in their educational journey. I believe that each student brings different experiences and strengths to the classroom. My hope is that I can support and appropriately challenge students to help them reach their full potential.
