Encouraging Writing Skills in Preschool Boys Through Play

Boys and girls often learn and play differently. Not all boys play in the same way but soon enough you can recognise the way your child plays. Learning and play times at home allow ample opportunities to play to each child's strength. Boys in general are not equal in fine motor skills as the same aged girls. In our society of equality this poses a problem. If the boys generally are not the same as the girls then the boys need help to bring them up to be equal. We don not look the other way and say the girls are too advanced and need to be slowed down. That would not make sense. With those as the two choices it is easy to see how we have all gone with the raise the achievement of the boys route.

If you see their lack of equal fine motor skills as a developmental issue then things look different. You would not expect a child who is 6 months to be feeding themselves with a spoon that may seem remarkable advanced. Whereas a 12 month old child it may not be so unusual. Although 6 months separate them in child development time this is much more important. Turn now to a 4 year old boy and 4 year old girl. We have stopped counting months. The expectation is that they will be the same or equal in their milestones. This however is not true. These four year olds have preferences and are attracted to do certain activities. Some would say predisposed because of brain development and sex differences.

The outcome for both is the same you want happy confident learners. Since they are learning through play there are many ways to provide a variety of experiences. When you look at your child do you modify their play experiences to match their personality? How do you encourage them with difficult activities?

Writing is one of those difficult activities often for boys. Not difficult that they find it hard, although some do. Difficult in getting anything like the amount you feel they are capable of doing and certainly at the same age as the girls. They may just be disinterested and not ready. Learning and play is fun but also challenging and hard many times. Your boy may prefer to run around than work on fine motor skills. We have to find the balance to that. Writing skills are important but there is a fine line between pushing when they are not ready and switching them off to writing so early on. They have more than a decade of schooling let alone life ahead where their lack of writing skills will seriously change their life outcomes. So it is not something to be light about yet we need to be careful that in the interests of equality only we are setting up boys to fail.

Sometimes we will allow them to stop the challenging work because we are building that skill and other times we need to find a new way to encourage that fine motor activity. We want to give them chances to improve and strengthen their resilience to try and succeed.

Strategies
Keep the activities short.
Have a few activities to choose from to give them choices.
Fine motor activities work really well after a running around activity.
Change the types of writing experiences without making a big deal.
Keep things fun and light.
Follow their lead and interests.

Examples

Write in unusual places: foggy mirrors or windows of the car, chalk on the back porch, make a treasure map on the driveway, shaving foam or yogurt on trays, sand in a tub. Have sets of activities in the stroller, car, in the kitchen that require finger thumb activity ( pincer grip). Many are easily made or bought including lacing cards, threading beads, cotton reels or buttons.

Keep a variety of wand toys around the home. There are magnetic ones that you use the wand to move the balls from one area to another holding the wand like a pencil. Other long time favourites are magnadoodles and etch-a-sketch which encourage fun and learning.

Play alongside them with their type of toy. Draw in the yogurt with them. It gives the activity importance because you are doing it. It may not be your first choice of activity but it is what your boy craves. We all like to have fun so as your boy gets older allow them to do all types of activity. Playing in the bath foam or scratching their name in the sand is not babyish because they can use a pencil and paper.

Encourage other males to do these types of activities with your boy and any other writing type activity. The bottom line is we want all our children to succeed and give them as many chances when they are young to develop a love of learning. This means we have to find what works for our child whether boy or girl. There are always many ways to get to the same point.