Parents and teachers frequently ask, “What’s the best way to introduce drawing and writing?” My knee jerk response: “Throw away the pencils and workbooks!” Exploration through a variety of mediums is a great way to get a child loving the creative process of drawing and eventually writing.
Dot art is a perfect way to start building the foundations for drawing and writing.
Benefits:
- When held correctly, the exact muscles in the hand and fingers used for a pencil grasp get strong
- Encourages visual attention
- Helps develop eye hand skills
- Can be used for a broad age range, from young toddlers to older children
- Can be used to help teach letters an numbers
- Can be used for creativity
Directions:
1. Place large sheet of paper on the floor or table. For very young children, you may want to tape the paper down.
2. Help the child hold the tube correctly.
- For children 2-3 use a gross grasp.
- For children 4 on, encourage a thumb and index finger (only) grasp. This may be difficult but maintaining this grip is critical to gain the hand strengthening benefits. If the child cannot hold the tube this way, then have them go back to a gross grasp. For children who can do this briefly, encourage them to take a rest instead of changing hand positions.
- For older children (4 on) encourage them to hold the paper down with the non-dominant hand.
Special Considerations:
- For older children, this can be a sophisticated creative art project, using the dot art to make patterns, designs and paintings (much like Impressionistic Art).
- This is a great activity to do on the floor when encouraging trunk strengthening.
- When children struggle to learn the correct pencil grip, this is an especially great activity to do.