St. Patrick’s Day Pre-Writing for Preschoolers
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One of the important skills preschoolers need to develop is fine motor (or writing) skills, to be able to in Kindergarten. This means that they need to practice as much as possible in preschool, and to help you with that I’ve designed these free St. Patrick’s prewriting activities, that will also make a nice addition to your St. Patrick’s Day theme during the month of March.
Importance of Pre-Writing Skills
The development of pre-writing skills in preschoolers is essential for them to learn how to write because these skills will give them the necessary base that will later transform into writing.
Children that go to Kindergarten without developing pre-writing skills will have a very hard time learning how to write, and that means that preschool teachers need to give them plenty of opportunities to develop these skills.
Activities to Develop Pre-writing Skills
Pre-writing activities include any time of activity that will help preschoolers develop their fine motor skills build strength in the muscles on their fingers and hands, and develop a proper pencil grasp before they’ve even started to form letters and numbers.
These activities include lacing, cutting, pasting, inserting beads in pipe cleaners, coloring, painting, using their fingers to trace in the sand, using clothespins and tweezers to grab something, using stamps and stickers, scrunching and ripping paper, using droppers, using pegboards, and doing puzzles, just to mention some of them.
The key to good writing skills development is to constantly practice their fine motor skills, giving them plenty of opportunities to manipulate different types of materials.
If you have read some of my posts by now, you sure took the hint that I don’t like to give my preschoolers anything boring and, I consider it a good teaching strategy to change their routine a little bit every so often, to keep them engaged, and eager to learn.
St. Patrick’s Day Prewriting Activity
Using this holiday as an excuse, I created this free prewriting activity to help you offer your children a different activity that will help them work on their fine motor skills, bringing some variety to your preschool classroom.
This free pre-writing activity includes two pages with four strips each, using different variations in lines.
Materials You Will Need
- Free St. Patrick’s Day pre-writing activity (found at the end of this post)
- Printer.
- White cardstock.
- Laminator.
- Laminator sheets or
- Dry erase pouches.
- Dry-erase markers.
Now, if you are like me and want to make it more fun and give your children variety and choices, you can add St. Patrick’s Day writing materials and manipulatives to the mix. The good news is that most of them can be stored for next year.
How to Prepare the St. Patrick’s Day Pre-Writing Activity
I will suggest printing this activity on white cardstock and laminating it or placing it in a dry-erase pouch, for multiple uses. You can leave it as a one-sheet activity or cut out the strips to make it more versatile. There’s no right or wrong. Just choose the one you think will be more useful in your classroom.
In my case, I like to give the children both options; therefore, I always offer this type of activity in both versions. Besides, it is always a good practice to place writing materials in every center, and using both versions will give your students variety and choices.
How to Use This Activity
You can use these pre-writing sheets in many ways, taking into consideration the different levels of development of your preschoolers’ skills. Some of the activities you can do with these St. Patrick’s Day Pre-Writing mats are:
Finger Tracing
Have your preschoolers trace the lines with their fingers. That will give them a sense of how the lines go. Don’t forget to tell them to go from left to right, since that is the correct direction to write.
Grasping
Have them grasp a pom-pom with a clothespin, and have them “trace” the lines using the pom-pom. This particular activity will have them working more on their fine motor skills because it will force them to use their pincer grasp, which is essential to learning how to grasp a pencil correctly.
Stamping
Children love this particular and simple activity. Give them some small stampers, to be used following the direction of the lines. The children will be especially interested if you provide St. Patrick’s Day stampers. Remember that changing the materials, toys, and routine a little bit will keep them interested.
Pasting
The use of stickers is also great to work on those fine motor skills because when children peel and paste stickers they are getting the opportunity to work on those finger muscles and concentration. Give your children some St. Patrick’s stickers for an extra kick, and paste along the lines.
Marking
If you are using an unlaminated sheet of paper or cards, you can have them use crayons, pencils, or regular markers to trace the lines. If you laminate them or place them inside a dry-erase sleeve, then have your preschooler use a dry-erase marker to trace the lines.
This last activity also gives them an extra opportunity to work on their pre-writing skills, because you can tell them to use their fingers to erase the lines and retrace them.
Using Small Manipulatives
Remember that it is important to offer variety and choices to help your preschoolers develop their pre-writing skills, and using small manipulatives is a great way to do it.
There are many St. Patrick-related small manipulatives that you can add to your writing and manipulative centers, to switch things around and keep them interesting. Some of them are bottoms, mini erasers, sequins, plastic coins, or gems. Present the pre-writing strips and the small manipulatives to your children, and simply invite them to choose one type and line objects along the lines of the pre-writing activity’s cards, to practice those pre-writing skills.
To make sure your children are successful in this particular activity give them an unlaminated sheet of paper, without the dry erase sleeve. Otherwise, it will be too slippery, which could cause frustration in your children, something you don’t want.
Using Playdough
The use of playdough is a great fine motor activity because it helps your children develop those little muscles on their fingers, and it is so fun, that the children feel excited and happy about it. To continue with the theme at hand, add green and yellow playdough to your centers invite your preschoolers to roll fine snakes with it, and place them on top of the strips to form the lines as they go.
St. Patrick’s Storybooks and Pointers
If you know me, you will know that I always encourage everybody to use storybooks every chance they get. Remember that reading and writing go together, and children cannot properly learn one without the other.
There are many books that you can use for St. Patrick’s Day. You can find some at your local library, used book store, and on Amazon. These are some I like. If you want to add some to your collection, just click on the titles and my affiliate links will take you to the right page in seconds.
- How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace. Start a St. Patrick’s Day tradition with this fun and lively children’s picture book and get inspired to build leprechaun traps of your own at home or in the classroom!
- Ten Lucky Leprechauns by Kathryn Heling. Count from one to ten as one little leprechaun looking for treasure magically becomes ten silly leprechaun friends at the end of the rainbow.
- The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day by Natasha Wing. It’s the night before St. Patrick’s Day, and Tim and Maureen are wide awake setting traps to catch a leprechaun! When they wake the next morning, they’re shocked to find that they’ve caught a leprechaun. But, will they find his pot of gold?
- The Secret Life of the Leprechauns by Luna James. A fun and silly picture book that allows children to enter the life of the leprechauns.
- The Berenstain Bears’ St. Patrick’s Day by Mike Berenstain. Join Papa, Mama, and the cubs as Gramps introduces them to some of the traditions most associated with the holiday, from gathering to enjoy a parade down Main Street to leprechauns and pots of gold.
- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover! by Lucille Colandro. It’s spring and the Old Lady is swallowing a clover, a butterfly, a daisy, and more! Herald spring with this joyful story, full of bouncy rhymes and bright art!
When I read, I always use a pointer. This practice shows the children that you read from left to right and top to bottom and that words have meaning.
For this purpose, I created some markers as a gift to you. Just click on the bottom to get them, and once you do, print them out, laminate them, and stick them to a tongue depressor. That’s it. Easy, peasy. Remember to use them to follow the words or point at the pictures of the story you are reading.
Even better, you can even make extra ones and place them in the Library and Writing centers, and allow the children to use them. They will imitate your previous actions, giving them another pre-reading activity to practice, and developing their imagination and love for books.
You will never have too many activities to offer your children. The more you add or change the different themes you are talking about, the more you will keep them engaged, helping them develop the necessary skills they will need to create a solid foundation for their future reading and writing development in Kindergarten.
Just remember to use every opportunity to give them plenty of variety and choices, for their different levels of skills and interests, and most importantly, have fun while doing it. The children will pick up on your excitement and it will give them the extra encouragement to keep them engaged.
For that purpose, you might use this pre-writing activity together with the other St. Patrick’s theme-related activities with free printables I also created for you to use. Just check them out at the end of the post.
Pit It for Later
If you don’t have time to download your printable right away, just pin it to your St. Patrick’s Day or any other of your Pinterest boards for later.
As promised, your free prewriting activity is below. I hope you find it useful. Just enter your email address in the box to confirm your subscription and the pdf file will open instantly for you to print and save. If you are currently a subscriber, you won’t be subscribed twice.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
P.D. Please let me know if you like any of these ideas worked for you, or if you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful. Also, if you came up with different ideas and want to share them, I would love to post them as well.
