Writing Motor Skills Development for Very Young Learners

Well, this went surprisingly well for Jamie's first ever try at it! The video below shows us trying the "Motor skills 2" download, and the picture below that shows the final result from the first try.

The grid for this worksheet resembles a cage (if you use your imagination), and Jamie knows what that is based on some of his Disney books and cartoons. He's also pretty keen on rainbows, which is why I combined these two elements to catch his interest: "We're going to make a rainbow cage..."

He doesn't quite have a controlling grip with his crayons yet, but he's keen to do things on his own, and a lot of random playtime with coloring and drawing has obviously given him some spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination. As I said, he took to this much better than I thought he would.

As soon as he had finished this, he immediately looked around for a new sheet to draw on. He wanted the circles/curves one after this (remember to allow the child's interest to guide the choices and activities, not any pre-set notions you may have about which activity will be harder and/or must come after which), and the results can be seen in the post following this one...

Jamie wanted circles and curves next, so that's exactly what we did!

His awareness of what arrows are (and what they are for) really helped here, I must say. He knew where to place the crayon to start and what to do in order to follow the arrow. His first efforts here were with a white crayon (hey, his choice!), but I definitely saw his control improving as he moved around and finished the O and C shapes. The blue C in the image below demonstrates that pretty well.

After big straight lines and big Os and Cs, Jamie was obviously looking for something a little different. Looking around through my worksheets, he chose the patterns one next ("Motor skills - various" from the downloads above).

Personally, I thought this might be a bit tough for him on account of the drastic reduction in size, requiring much more precise and more rapid crayon movements. However, he really needs to be encouraged to take a shot at whatever takes his fancy at the time.

Again, I was surprised by how well he went with and handled it. We managed to have some more fun with the process by talking about "waves", "zigzags", "bumps", "holes", "sticks" and "circles" as he was tackling each line - he really enjoyed that, and was saying things like "Look, I'm making a wave!" or "bump! another bump! many many bumps!"

Things got tough for him on the circles row at the bottom though. Being so small and tight compared to the big spacious ones he was drawing earlier, it was obvious he couldn't see the shape as he was drawing it, making him hesitate and lose confidence. At this stage he asked for me to help him, so we drew the circles line together.

With the final photo below, you can see Jamie was pretty much done with sitting down and drawing. He'd been at it for only about 15-20 minutes total, but that was enough - he was ready to get down from the table and run off to play with something else. This is all very natural for his age, of course, and he really has to be allowed to do this how he wants, when he wants, and for how long he wants (when it comes to this sort of thing).

All up - a very fun and productive 15-20 minutes! Some time later I found him scribbling all over his finished sheets with other colors, making a complete mess of them (by adult tastes), standing on them, and then even cutting one to shreds with a pair of scissors! Also very natural for this age (and nothing negative in it at all, only more - if different - positives).

Lucky Dad prepared multiple copies - ready for the next time he wants to play at "motor skills" (to him it is "rainbow pictures")!

In actual fact, Jamie had seen his mum wielding the camera while he was working on his picasso skills, and he wanted to have his turn taking pictures once drawing time was all finished up.

He took this picture of his Dad - not bad for a toddler photographer, is it?! Unlike me, he manages to get people into the middle of the shot and actually makes them smile naturally!

Wow, my son might be still too young to follow those sophisticated lines...
But.. I am really anxious to use your material for my son.

It seems to me this is your first step to offer precious educational information for all the desperate mommies who don't know how to educate their chilren including me, haha..

As soon as i finish all this projects, I'll look through those material and try to use it for my son.

Thank you~~

PS. your daughter... not yet? please let me know~