Making handwriting practice fun – the letter Y

My boys love to learn to write the alphabet in a variety of different ways.  They even love handwriting worksheets – but I’m quite sure that’s because we do a lot of other hands-on learning before we get to that stage.

I find that making handwriting practice fun is pretty simple when I follow the pattern of ideas I outline below.

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We always start with something very simple: filling in a large block letter with objects.  A bonus is when we can find objects that start with the same sound as the letter itself.  I love that yellow starts with y.  That made it easy. 🙂

My Three filled his letter Y with yellow color tiles.  (My color tiles are a leftover manipulative from my teaching days – definitely worth purchasing because you can do so much with them!)  Get our giant letter Y here.

We always try to make the letter with objects from our house — so far we’ve only done straight letters, so it’s pretty easy to find something that works. Today we used yellow yarn.

Then I gave my Five three pieces of yellow pipe cleaner.  If starting with the /y/ sound isn’t important to you, try one of these ways:

• rulers
• Lincoln logs
• uncooked spaghetti noodles
• chopsticks
• toothpicks
• Q-tips

You get the idea!

My Three likes to use round dot stickers to complete these pages I make for him. You can see my original post and get the printable here.

Creating a letter out of tiny manipulatives is a challenge only my Five is ready for.  He easily made a Y using yellow power magnets on a baking sheet.

My boys like to write the letter with their fingers – especially if the writing surface is something they love to eat!  This time they had fun licking their fingers after writing the letter Y in yogurt (tinted with yellow food coloring).

These handwriting worksheets are a great beginning step for preschoolers.  They start with the largest letter and work their way down to the smallest — but if your little one isn’t ready for the smallest letters, don’t push. My Three crossed out the little Y’s.

The red starting dot is a great guide, and the bubbly letters leave room for shaky writing.  Get letter Y (and the rest of the alphabet) here.

Here’s a stage two handwriting page. Both my Three and my Five like to do these, but I definitely wouldn’t push it on a three-year-old unless he showed an interest.  Get your page here.

Our final handwriting page starts with a lot of support and ends with just a single dot for a starting point.  If your child can master these, he’s ready for traditional handwriting pages.  Get your copy here.

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