What is pre-writing skills?
pre-writing skills is the ability to draw graphic signs, including letters and numbers. For adults, writing or drawing pictograms seems like a natural activity that requires no special preparation. But in reality, pre-writing skills is a very complex competence, requiring the mastery of a number of other skills, such as eye-hand coordination or fine motor skills.
Fine motor skills and gross motor skills – how they affect pre-writing skills
The foundation for a child's proper and harmonious development is gross motor skills. Mastering and coordinating the movements of the entire body or large-scale movements, e.g., with arms and legs, is extremely important, not only for shaping correct posture or maintaining balance but also for acquiring subsequent skills. It is important to support and encourage a child to move: infants to crawl and then learn to walk, and older children to jump, run, or engage in activities in the garden or on the playground. Gross motor skills are the first step to learning to write because they are essential for efficiently dealing with fine motor skills.
Well-coordinated and precise movements of the fingers and the whole hand are fine motor skills. Honing this ability is the next step to mastering pre-writing skills. It is worth offering a child games that require manipulating various objects. All kinds of sorters, jigsaw puzzles, or regular puzzles will work well here. Additionally, while performing such activities, the child acquires and improves eye-hand coordination.
Main problems with pre-writing skills and their causes
Children reach graphomotor proficiency at different ages; this is an individual matter and depends, among other things, on their general level of development, the degree of mastery of gross and fine motor skills, or their practice in drawing and other manual-artistic games.
However, certain signals indicate that we are dealing with graphomotor disorders. We should pay attention if a child avoids activities requiring well-mastered fine motor skills or has significant difficulties with them, such as buttoning buttons, lacing shoes, or cutting with scissors. The child may also be reluctant to perform art projects (paper tearing, drawing, playing with various masses like modeling clay and playdough), hold a writing tool incorrectly, or apply too light or too strong pressure when attempting to trace patterns or write. Low graphomotor proficiency is also characterized by frequently going outside the lines while coloring or tracing, as well as drawing so-called crooked letters and numbers.
The causes of graphomotor problems can be numerous. They include both the child's general developmental problems and low physical fitness. A major obstacle to correctly mastering pre-writing skills will be a lack of precision in movements, especially within the hand. A low level of concentration and a lack of trained eye-hand coordination are frequent causes of difficulties in learning to write. Sometimes it turns out that the child has a problem with visual perception, judging what they see and drawing conclusions, i.e., with visual analysis and synthesis. Other areas that should be checked when graphomotor disorders occur are vision defects and reduced or increased muscle tone.
If the above problems are observed, you should go to a specialist who will evaluate the occurring disorders and propose appropriate therapy, known as hand therapy. It is worth remembering that you can (and even should!) also support your child in learning to write in the comfort of your home, preferably in the form of play – about which you will read below.
How to develop graphomotor proficiency
Graphomotor proficiency depends on many factors and on the mastery of a number of skills. First of all, it is worth focusing on strengthening the child's general physical fitness. Encourage your child to run, jump, and ride a bike or scooter. It is worth introducing fitness exercises such as arm circles, leg swings, ball throws, and overcoming a designated obstacle course. It is also very important to perform daily activities independently: brushing teeth, getting dressed, combing hair, and using cutlery.
In the next step, it is good to focus on training hand and palm movements and their precision. A good form of exercise will be filling in surfaces, starting with large areas in order to perform broad hand movements. Gradually, the area the child will color should be reduced. In working on the hand, it will be helpful to crumple paper balls, thread beads or pasta onto a string, decorate and form pictures, and make cutouts. It is worth encouraging toddlers to help with gardening, cooking, or DIY projects. For younger children, any finger games will be a good idea.
Remember not to criticize the child when some activities and exercises are difficult for them. Try not to do things for your child; a sense of agency and independence is a very big motivator!
Graphomotor exercises
The goals of graphomotor exercises include improving hand work, shaping the correct pressure of the writing tool, and improving the quality of handwriting. You can perform simple graphomotor exercises on your own at home. All you need are sheets of paper and something to write with (a felt-tip pen, pencil, or pen). Below we present a few suggestions.
Tracing pictures
Prepare a simple picture on a sheet of paper, e.g., a house, a tree, the sun, and clouds. Make the drawing with a pencil or a light crayon, using a dashed line. The child's task is to independently recreate the picture by following the dashed line.
Patterns for drawing
Draw a few patterns, leaving an empty space under each of them. Then, the child tries to recreate the same pattern below yours. If the child is not yet able to draw patterns independently, then use the dashed line method described above.
Coloring a mosaic
With a thick felt-tip pen, draw several horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines on a sheet of paper. Then, in each "window" of the mosaic, place a colored dot (with a felt-tip pen or crayon). The child's task is to color the mosaic using the colors indicated by the adult. Encourage the young person to color precisely so that they go "outside the lines" as little as possible.
Connecting the dots
Draw several dots on a sheet of paper (they can form a specific pattern, e.g., a zigzag, a circle, a polygon), and then ask the child to connect the dots with a line. For older children, you can create more complicated compositions, simultaneously marking the correct sequence of dots with numbers or letters.
Tracing objects
Prepare objects with different shapes, and then ask the child to trace the selected items on a sheet of paper. You can use, for example, your own hands and feet for this graphomotor improvement exercise.
Graphomotor boards
To diversify the graphomotor exercises, you can use special boards that have cut-out patterns. They can be used in many ways: from tracing the cut-out shapes with a finger, filling the patterns with, for example, playdough, to writing patterns inside the board and copying the presented pattern onto a sheet of paper next to it.
