At the meeting, the teacher revealed to me the study plan of the kindergarten large class, one of which is very crucial, which is to help children prepare for writing and writing in primary school. This is the key exercise of "pre-writing ability". In the IB system, large classes are equivalent to preparatory classes in primary schools, so from the age of 4 to 6, there will be a lot of writing exercises to help children make a better transition to primary schools.
As I shared before, when Joshua was in a big class, the pre-writing exercises that children needed to do in one year included 18 A4-sized books. I was surprised to get this pile of things before the end of the semester.
My younger brother, who just started school yesterday, introduced his writing practice at school with a novel written after school. Teachers also hope that parents can work with the school to help their children prepare for written writing. This includes a lot of fine motor exercises and the overall control of writing norms. Children who have fully mastered the pre-writing ability can be more detailed, efficient and fast in the written homework in primary school.
So today I want to talk to you, what is this "pre-writing ability" that has a great influence on children's learning efficiency and speed in primary school? This time, I invited my friend @ 嗤嗤嗤嗤 to take her 3-year-old tomato as an example to elaborate on this ability.
Little tomato is a child who grew up with Joshua and Eric. I have had a lot of discussions with Yi Yi about "pre-writing ability" these days. The little tomato appeared in real person for the first time and was very excited when she was young.
What you don't know about writing
"Pre-writing ability" refers to games and learning activities before formal and systematic writing.
Its clear definition is: "Preschool children use pen, ink, paper and other writing substitutes as tools to express and transmit information through painting and scribbling, and share and exchange their thoughts, feelings and experiences with their peers and adults around them."
There is a core point here, that is, writing substitutes such as pen, ink and paper, and expressing your thoughts, feelings and experiences through painting and graffiti.
So don't think that as long as you scribble paper and pens on your children in kindergarten, you will learn in advance. In fact, the real practice of pre-writing ability begins with the child's graffiti ability, which can last for 4 years until the child can control it stably.
The Guide to Learning and Development for Children Aged 3-6 issued by the Ministry of Education mentions that preschool children need to have "written wishes and preliminary skills". ▼
You see, the guidance and suggestions given in the guide are all improved step by step from the age of 3.
As early as 1 2 years old, before children can really write with pens, many writing abilities have already begun to be exercised and developed.
If we can cooperate with children's sensitive period and let them master the basic "pre-writing ability", school-age writing can be much less painful and suffering.
Although the ability to write before runs through the child's early 4 years old, it is not an easy task.
The reason why writing is difficult for children is precisely because it is a very comprehensive thing: it involves maintaining a stable posture, requiring just the right strength, and close cooperation between hands and brain, and each item is not so easy.
So why do you need a lot of practice to help you improve? In general, it is to help children accumulate basic skills in the following three directions:
Strength and control: fine movements and big movements
Coordination ability: hands coordination, hand-eye coordination.
Visual perception: judging structure and spatial orientation
The exercise of these basic abilities has been transformed into various games. From childhood to adulthood, each item is "broken one by one", and it is much easier to write together.
Let's first sort by age according to the instructions in the guide and see what children need to do together in order to better accumulate this ability in daily life.
Before introducing, I would like to remind you that although the activities here are divided by age, they are not strict. Children's abilities and preferences are different. Many activities are just about the age at which they started. If children like it, they can keep playing.
0-2 years old: finger kneading, hand-eye coordination
In the first few years of life, children's small muscles have begun to exercise themselves, and their coordination is steadily improving. As long as they pay a little attention, they can harvest a little baby, and then their writing will have a foundation.
Take care of yourself
In fact, the best enlightenment comes from life, giving children enough independent space and giving them many opportunities to try, and the ability and coordination of fingers will gradually improve.
Grab food with your hands
Eating finger food is the simplest finger movement.
Since we had complementary food, our family has been providing hand-grabbed food for our baby. It was easy to catch big carrots and potatoes at first, but later it got smaller and smaller. The meat has also changed from a block to a big chicken leg, which is a little more difficult. ▼
For my snack tomato, every meal is hard to get what he likes. ▼
In this process, I will find that the baby's finger grasping ability has been improving, from grasping with the whole palm at the beginning to pinching with three fingers or even two fingers gradually. ▼
1
2
three
four
Palmer grip → Mastery → Side winding finger grip → Clamp grip.
Moreover, the accuracy in the feeding mouth is also improving, and it will not paste the face. This is the improvement of hand-eye coordination.
Use a spoon
The advanced version of grasping food by hand is using a spoon. It's not easy to put the spoon firmly in your mouth without knocking it over. Among them, if the child makes a mistake, it is the only way for the baby to grow up, and there is no need to worry about stopping him or erasing it.
I recommend you start with yogurt, which is very sticky and irresistible. Children generally like it. ▼
Patience for a few months, the child's small hands practice, naturally can eat very clean.
Paper game
Tear paper
Children like napkins. Extract one by one, and then shred one by one.
Tearing paper requires the cooperation of children's thumb, index finger and middle finger, and also needs the cooperation of both hands. It is a good way to exercise fine movements and coordination. ▼
If you want to advance, you can tear harder paper, or draw a pattern on the paper and tear out the desired shape. Being able to "follow the lines" is a very important pre-writing ability.
Stick a sticker.
Probably not many children don't like stickers. My house is full of traces left by children's stickers. Tearing off the sticker completely is quite a test of the child's fine movements. My tomato once had a big argument with me for 300 rounds because it couldn't tear off the sticker normally.
If your child doesn't mind, you can choose an electrostatic sticker that can be pasted repeatedly without leaving a trace. It's plastic and doesn't tear easily. ▼
But there are always some children who prefer the real sticky feeling, so they can also buy some sticker game books. The only risk is that children may prefer to stick them on the wall.
Pen Holding Exercise: Graffiti
Children around 2 years old may enter the sensitive period of graffiti and like painting very much. At this time, they can spread white paper and create with the baby.
As long as the baby is interested, graffiti can continue. There is no need to correct the way the child holds the pen at first, as long as TA likes this way of "leaving traces on paper". ▼
2-4 years old: finger strength and coordination
The only shortcut to improve children's finger strength, flexibility and coordination is to practice more. Don't get me wrong, it's not always written with a pen, but done in daily activities and games, which is not boring at all.
Take care of yourself and others.
For 2-and 3-year-old children with bursting self-awareness, the most common exercise is to "do your own things and help yourself with things at home".
Because at this age, they like to explore the boundaries of their own abilities, and the sense of ability generated by work will make them "addicted", and finger performance will naturally go up!
Wear clothes, socks and shoes.
Children wearing their own clothes and shoes are of great help to their coordination and fine movements.
When the children begin, everyone must resist the urge to "point". As long as TA doesn't ask for help, it may take a long time at first. When the tomato learned to button, I endured extreme pain, but soon he became proficient. ▼
Simple housework
In addition to taking care of yourself, you can also assign some simple housework to your children, such as "helping with the kitchen".
Peeling, choosing vegetables, peeling broad beans, or cutting fruit with a safe fruit knife are all good ways to exercise children's finger strength and muscle control. ▼
Among his peers, tomato's practical ability is not bad, not only because he practices much, but also because he has gained a lot of sense of accomplishment from it, so he trusts his hands more and is willing to challenge more complicated things.
The game of paper
Most children like playing with paper. After the age of two, they can transition from tearing paper to paper-cutting and origami. In addition to training children's finger ability, it is also of great help to children's "spatial cognition" ability.
paper cutting
Scissors were introduced to our home a long time ago. At first, we used scissors-shaped clips in the learning resource tool set to practice the cooperation between thumb and forefinger. ▼
Later, I tried many different kinds of children's scissors. But it is not recommended to use pure plastic scissors without blades for children, because they are too difficult to use and children are easily frustrated.
At first, we used scissors to cut nails when the baby was still a baby. Later, children's scissors from IKEA were suitable for the size of a baby's palm as long as they were round. ▼
Starting with random cutting, you can cut horizontal and vertical lines, and then cut out specific shapes, and you develop the ability to "follow the line".
Tomatoes are big fans of scissors. Later, he cut our flowers. ▼
Origami manual
In addition to exercising hand muscles, origami also tests children's spatial cognitive ability. As we all know, if you want to write well, you must have a good sense of space and know how to arrange strokes and structures. And origami is the ability to practice this part.
When origami, guiding children to observe the changes after flipping and folding will give them a very intuitive experience of "space".
Build a game
All kinds of building games, such as magnetic film, Lego and plasticine, can be played. The same is to practice strength and cooperation to see what children like to play. Tomatoes like nail boards best. It is not easy to finish a work if you don't work hard. ▼
If children have enough ability, let them try to look at drawings, learn to analyze the structural relationship between components, and understand symmetry, verticality and parallelism, which is also very helpful for children to understand fonts and structures in the future.
With these comprehensive exercises, the child's own ability has been improved and it is much easier to hold the pen. Therefore, it is natural to add some pen-holding exercises.
Holding pen practice
By the age of three or four, children's muscle control ability will come up, which can range from unconstrained graffiti to red coloring that needs more control.
What needs to be reminded here is that with the growth of age, you should start to consciously manage your pen holding posture and guide yourself to hold the pen in a way that suits your age. It is much easier to be right at first than to form a bad habit, and then gradually change it. This is the law of holding a pen shared by Budd (click to view: "Pay attention to the posture of holding a pen from the beginning of graffiti. Is your child right? ""), can be combined. ▼
Paint red
Tracing red is actually learning to draw various lines, laying the foundation for later Chinese character writing.
There is a super rich practice of tracing red in "Happy Writing" introduced yesterday. The advanced level is particularly reasonable, and the writing methods that children can use are gradually practiced.
The first four volumes start with simple dots and lines. ▼
After that, curves and polylines are introduced. ▼
Finally, there will be comprehensive physical exercises. ▼
With these foundations, children have formed a muscle memory of various lines, and they will not feel unfamiliar when writing Chinese characters in the future.
Color painting
Coloring requires children to control strokes and not to cross the line, which is also a good practice before writing. ▼
Some mothers worry that coloring will make their children lose their creativity in graffiti, but I think this is actually two different things. Coloring is not real creation, but more like some kind of writing training. If you want children to create, you can just throw away the manuscript and draw directly.
When these activities continue, the small muscles in children's hands will become more and more energetic and "obedient", so at the age of 4-6, they can enter more targeted "pre-writing exercises".
4-6 years old: simple writing exercises
Because Chinese characters have stroke order and structure besides strokes, there is too much information for children who just learn to write, so they need to be helped to practice in groups. ▼
For example, you can start with relatively simple letter writing and let children feel the experience of writing "characters". ▼
Letter writing does not involve complicated structure, but can focus on the smoothness and connection of lines, which will make "writing" more acceptable.
When writing Chinese characters, a single Chinese character will be too difficult, so you can practice from a single stroke. For example, Books 5 and 6 of Happy Learning to Write focus on children learning different strokes. ▼
After mastering specific strokes, it is easy to learn to write a single Chinese character.
In the seventh and eighth volumes of this book, when introducing a single Chinese character, the stroke order is also marked to make the children's writing process smoother, which is an important part of developing correct writing habits. ▼
Of course, at this age, in addition to the necessary writing exercises, all the activities mentioned before can still be arranged.
If you want to write well, you really need to practice, but the ways of practice can be diversified, and holding a pen is only part of it. In a different way, children will not be so resistant.
The above is the comprehensive training of the system's "pre-writing ability"!
The sharing of anecdotes and small tomatoes actually tells us one thing. The guidance of many early education enlightenments is not as difficult as first thought. And I don't know if you have found out that the process of cultivating pre-writing ability actually quietly exercises other abilities, such as origami and structure, which is also very helpful for mathematical thinking.
In fact, the child's development is like this, affecting the whole body. Every ability improvement involves many other keys.
This is why we especially encourage everyone to start teaching early in life. Don't improve a skill in isolation, but apply it in daily life. In this way, you will get a comprehensive improvement in your baby's comprehensive ability, which is very cost-effective.