Interactive Writing Activities

Dear Parents,

we have compiled 5 useful writing resources that you can carry out with your child, as well as educational websites that you can use to support and enhance your child’s literacy learning. Please feel free to browse through these resources and try them out with your child!

We hope that you and your child will enjoy engaging in these activities!

Pre-writing Construction Vehicles Tracing Activity (3- to 4-year-olds)

This activity is a pre-writing activity that allows your child to practice his/her fine motor skills before writing words using writing materials. This strengthens your child’s finger strength, which helps him/her in learning to write.

Link to resource: https://www.boeybear.com/post/get-the-vehicles-to-their-destinations

Activity steps:

1. Click on the picture of the activity above or the link below to access the Boey Bear website to download and print the activity sheet for your child.

2. Have your child trace the lines on the activity sheet using his/her fingers.

3. Then, invite your child to use a pencil or colour pencil to trace the lines if they are able to hold a pencil.

You can find the instructions for the activity on the Boey Bear website. You can also provide your child with play dough for them to roll the play dough and align it with the lines to strengthen his/her fine motor skills.

Dot and Colour Letters (3- to 4-year-olds)

This activity is another pre-writing activity that allows your child to practice his/her fine motor skills before writing words using writing materials. This strengthens your child’s finger strength, which helps him/her in learning to write. This activity also targets the literacy skills of letter recognition and identifying letter sounds.

Link to resource: https://www.funearlylearning.com/product/dot-and-color-letters-sounds/

Activity steps:

1. Click on the picture of the activity above or the link below to access the Fun Early Learning website to download and print the activity sheets for your child.

2. Provide your child with cotton buds (optional), child-safe paint, colour pencils, and colour markers.

3. Ask your child what is the letter on each of the activity sheets.

4. After your child identifies the letter, ask your child what is the sound of the letter.

5. Then, have your child use his/her fingers or the cotton buds to cover the dots that make up the letters using the paint. Your child can also colour the dots using colour pencils and colour markers.

You can find the instructions for the activity on the Fun Early Learning website. You can also facilitate the activity for your child by asking him/her to tell you words that begin with the letter sounds. You can also draw your child’s attention to how the upper and lower case letters look like and the letter strokes.

Forming Letters Using Playdough Letter Mats (3- to 6-year-olds)

This activity allows your child to learn to form letters using play dough while strengthening your child’s hand muscle strength. Moreover, as your child forms the letters using the play dough, they will be able to feel the strokes and shapes of the letters. This will benefit him/her greatly as he/she learns to write the letters using pencils.

Link to resource: https://www.kindergartenworksheetsandgames.com/free-alphabet-playdough-cards/

Activity steps:

1. Click on the picture of the activity above or the link below to access the Kindergarten Worksheets and Games website to download and print the play dough letter mats for your child.

2. Give your child play dough and a letter mat.

3. Ask your child what is the letter on the letter mat.

4. After your child identifies the letter, ask your child what is the sound of the letter.

5. Then, have your child use the play dough to form the letter on the letter mat.

6. Invite your child to use a pencil to trace the letters on the penmanship lines at the bottom of the letter mat (if your child is able to use a pencil).

7. Point out the pictures and words at the bottom of the letter mat and tell your child that these words begin with that letter/letter sound.

You can find the instructions for the activity on the Kindergarten Worksheets and Games website. You can also facilitate the activity for your child by telling your child how to form the letter strokes (e.g., make a circle for the letter ‘O’).

Farm Animal Play Dough and Letter Mats (4- to 5-year-olds)

This is a writing activity where your child will practice writing letters and words on penmanship lines. As your child trace the dotted lines to form letters and words on the letter mats, they will learn how to write upper and lower case letters and learn the difference between the upper and lower case letters. Moreover, this activity strengthens your child’s hand muscle strength as he/she uses play dough to make the farm animals on the letter mats.

Link to resource: https://abcsofliteracy.com/farm-animal-play-dough-letter-mats/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=farm_activities_for_kids&utm_term=2021-07-25

Activity steps:

1. Click on the picture of the activity above or the link below to access the ABC’s of Literacy website to download and print the play dough letter mats for your child.

2. Give your child play dough and a letter mat.

3. Ask your child what is the letter on the letter mat.

4. After your child identifies the letter, ask your child what is the word on the letter mat and what is the farm animal on the mat.

5. Invite your child to trace the letters and words on the letter mat.

6. Then, have your child use the play dough to form the farm animal on the letter mat.

You can find the instructions for the activity on the ABC’s of Literacy website. You can also facilitate the activity for your child by drawing your child’s attention to the difference between the upper and lower case letters (e.g., the upper case letter ‘C’ is taller than the lower case letter ‘c’).

Writing Journal (5- to 6-year-olds)

This is a writing activity where your child can practice writing using invented spelling (spelling words based on the letter sounds that can be heard in the words) and conventional spelling. This allows your child to learn to convey information through his/her writing. This will prepare him/her for primary school, where he/she will write longer sentences to share information (e.g., answering homework questions and writing compositions).

Link to resource: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eUb4wfSmRuSPhvDd3A_hs-zL9jvUlbvb/view?usp=sharing

Activity steps:

1. Click on the picture of the activity above or the link below to download and print our writing journal for your child.

2. Invite your child to write about a topic. You can decide on a topic for your child, but you can also refer to the ‘Writing Prompts’ page on our journal to choose a topic for your child if you are unsure of what to get your child to write about.

3. Get your child to think of what to write before inviting him/her to draw out his/her sentence(s) on the box.

4. After your child finishes drawing, have him/her write out his/her sentence(s) on the penmanship lines on the journal using invented or conventional spelling.

- For invented spelling, break the word up into its letter sounds and get your child to write down the letters that he/she heard to spell the words (e.g., /d/ /o/ /g/).

- For conventional spelling, spell out the word using the letters and get your child to write the letters to spell the word.

5. Remind your child about writing conventions as he/she is writing (e.g., one finger spacing between words, punctuations, use of upper case letters at the start of sentences).

6. Show your child the sight words list so that he/she can refer to it to spell sight words for his/her sentence(s).

7. After your child finishes writing his/her sentence(s), invite him/her to share about his/her drawing and read the sentence(s) for you.

You can include this writing journal activity as part of your child’s routine to help your child to get used to and improve in his/her writing. For example, you can set 30 minutes during the weekends for your child to write in the journal. As your child gets used to writing, you can increase the frequency of the activity. You can print out page 3 of the writing journal again for each week so that your child can write a new journal entry. This is a good activity for you to track your child’s progress in writing as you compare his/her writing journal entries over a period of time.